SUNFLOWER SEASON

I've been walking around all summer muttering “Blessed are the flexible,” like it's the thirteenth Beatitude. I can't be alone in imagining it to be the thirteenth, implied rule for life, can I? This summer has brought a boat load of change, some anticipated and much entirely a surprise. 

It's been an age since I've written here and while I'll be doing my usual birthday and new years “year in review” I can say that I've spent much of the last eight months in what I'm calling my “season of excavation.” I split the year up into “quarters” to assist with “sprints to short term goals” or to give focus to a particular theme I wanted to frame a specific period of time this year. And while I have largely kept to that blueprint in regards to focus, one thing is clear: my “season of excavation” is determined not to be contained within its three month frame. So “blessed are the flexible” is indeed a sort of mantra to make both myself and the folks around me laugh through this season. 

In short, since June, I have lived with a rotating compilation of four new roommates – each a gift in their own particular way. I have had a large transition in my role at work. Five friends have moved to Ireland, Egypt, Australia, and Quebec City over the last two months. In this context, the discovery that my favourite waiter at the beloved Italian dining corner had left was almost enough to send me over the edge. There have also been a number of other changes, some visible and some only visible to the heart's eye that I will continue keep to myself and the home team. 

Throughout the entirety of this season, I have found myself buying fresh sunflowers to bring into the house like they're going out of style. This was pointed out to me the other day by the latest short-term roommate as she moved the last of her things out of our flat. We both laughed but as she closed the door, I wondered why on earth I had kept gravitating to sunflowers. While I've always admired their brilliance since the postcards I received from childhood from my aunt's annual pilgrimages from her hot Roman flat to the fields of Tuscany, I've never had a particular affinity for them. I'm more of a peony and tulip woman myself, truth be told. 

And then I remembered the story a former colleague had told me the previous fall. Over a glass of wine, she told me that she was falling in love in the most unexpected way. As we talked, she shared about how sunflowers emerged as a theme throughout the course of her love story. Her (now) husband told her that she reminded him of a sunflower, all blonde curls surrounding a face turned up like a sunflower towards the sun. 

And so, the other day, as I came across Mary Oliver's sort of ode to sunflowers, it came to me: in a season marked by deep change and all of the struggles and gifts that come with that reality, I have chosen (albeit subconsciously) to keep close blooms that in and of themselves oriented towards the sun. In fact, blossoms have, since this past spring, functioned as signs of the Presence of God in what appeared to be yet another indefinite stretch of liminal space. From my months-long hunt for peonies, to the gift of flowers picked from the refugee shelter garden by a new resident, I have been surrounded by the reminder that we are always in the process of being made new. 

Twice in a row around the season of Pentecost, dear ones who are wholly unconnected to one another, texted me the same verse from Isaiah 58:11 - the part about God making you into “a well watered garden -  in a 24 hours period. Coincidence? I think not!

And so, I have resolved that I will continue to fill my home with sunflowers, with reminders that I am continually being stretched, face-first towards the Sun/Son. I am living into the “blessing of flexibility” with the hopes that my heart will follow. As summer turns to fall, I'm asking to be given the eyes to see beginnings, not just endings, signs of new life all about me. I resolve in this indefinite season of change – in an age too often marked by dark and divide - to be one who shines with the light of the sun, orienting both herself and those around her towards the light. 

For those who want to enjoy the same Mary Oliver poem I've been loving this summer, I've linked to it, here.