Wild Gifts

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart, give yourself to it." Buddha

The Queen Anne's lace and wild Black eyed Susan have been especially beautiful this year. Huge swaths of both these sturdy wildflowers line the interstate and the back roads of North Georgia. I have been stopping regularly along the road up to the house to cut them, enduring successive attacks of chiggers when I have forgotten to spray down before traversing the ditches along the roadside. The Queen Anne sheds terribly after a day or so, but watching the flowers fold up into intricate seed balls is worth it. On my early morning walk, or coming home late in the day, I am always heartened by the sight of them.

There is a special beauty about wild flowers. Beyond their simple loveliness, I think it is because we don't have anything to do with where they show up. They simply appear in the places that suit them best. On more than one occasion I have tried to transplant them to my back border. So far, they will have none of it. It's not rocky or dry enough and maybe deep down, they don't want to be put anywhere they don't choose for themselves. We are not so different. It is a vital lesson in self awareness to understand where we will best flourish and have the loyalty to get ourselves there. Maybe that is why the wildness in us still exists. When we devote even part of ourselves to what we love, we create beauty and harmony. Our lives achieve their own sturdy balance that heartens everything around us. Perhaps that is the reason to hold in high regard the natural blossoming that each of us carry within. Our world needs the beauty and balance of the gifts we hold inside.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you; beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rilke's Book of
Hours Love Poems to God