Like a Flower: Re-birthing, Rising, Opening, Beautifying
Rev. Finley Schaef, preaching
Park Slope United Methodist Church
Brooklyn, NY
Easter Sunday,
April 7,
1996
Loren Eiseley in his book THE IMMENSE JOURNEY has written a chapter called "How Flowers Changed the World."
If it weren't for flowers, we wouldn't have birds and mammals, who fed happily on the flowers, their seeds, and the insects aligned with them. The next time you love your pet, say a quick word of thanks to flowers. About animals, Walt Whitman wrote:
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self- contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. .... Not one is demented with the mania of owning things, .... Not one is respectable or unhappy, over the whole earth. (from "Song of Myself")
We can say that Christianity is a religion of flowers because our High Holy Day coincides with the return of the flowers. The religion of Flowers is a "born-again" religion, because flowers keep coming back! They die in the Fall and then they miraculously come up out of the soil! Yesterday in our garden, Ellen Kirby took me over to the compost bin where we throw our garbage, which then miraculously converts to healthy dirt. Some say it's a compost bin, others say it's a miracle bin! All around the bin yesterday, tulips were springing up like wild snakes. Ellen had thrown away a bunch of bulbs last Fall. One had grown through a small hole in the compost bin and its 2-toned petals were open wide to the world. Take a look at it during the social hour.
Easter and flowers go hand in hand. They are partners. Flowers are visible to the 5 senses. Easter bespeaks of an invisible presence: the presence of Spirit. And both witness to new life and rebirth.
Here's part of a poem by Antonio Machado:
Corridors of the soul! The soul that is like a young woman! You are clear light and the joy of a new life. . .
Oh turn and be born again, and walk the road, and find once more the lost path!
Turn and feel in our own hand the warmth of the good hand of our mother.
What is a human being? Some say we are unique because we THINK. Others say we are creatures that LAUGH! Others that we are creatures that have LANGUAGE. On Easter day, we say, People are flowers!
Flowers come in many colors, and the more colors the better! Flowers don't scapegoat: roses don't blame the daisies when there's no rain. Nor are roses judgmental -- they don't care which bees the tulips love best -- they're content only to know that the tulips love. Roses say to the world: "Tulips can love anybody they want!"
There is a time when the flowers fade and faint. We do too! We get wilted and droop. We turn pale. We get stepped on, by others who are careless and by others who are cruel.
There are times when flowers just die. And there are times when that's the way we feel. Like dying. (So weary!)
I talked to a man in our neighborhood who lived with his mother; then his mother was admitted to the hospital; then she died. I helped at the funeral service. This man was crushed -- he wanted to die too. He stayed home. Finally he mentioned the possibility of doing volunteer work at the hospital that cared for his mother in her final days. There was a spark, a spark of gratitude. That spark saved him!
We went immediately to the hospital office and got the necessary information. He felt better. Then he inquired about a bereavement support group. We found one in the neighborhood. He went once and liked it. Slowly he is coming back to life. Like the forsythia bush in our garden, he is blossoming. His voice has a new ring to it -- not the sad depressed voice of only a month before. Sometimes he lapses and stays home, alone. Then he comes to life again. Step by step. "Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won."
We are like flowers. No matter how far down we sink, we get born again, we rise, we open up, and finally we beautify the world around us.
We are like flowers. No matter how far down we sink, we find new strength, we stand up and step out, we open up to others and become friendly again, and finally we beautify the world around us by doing something good, something unselfish.
This is how we imagine the resurrection -- the way a flower sees it.
The crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are, in one sense, history. But in the most profound sense, they constitute the story of our lives. Every one of us.
We die -- we die in many sorts of ways; sometimes we get crucified. We get laid off, we lose a loved one, we get betrayed -- which is to say, our trust broken the way Judas broke Jesus' trust. Crucifixion comes more often these days than it used to when luck runs out and people become rent-poor (after they pay the rent there's not much left). Others have a boss who requires them to do things that offend conscience and normal goodwill.
Or we do painful things to ourselves: we yield to the temptation of putting the quest for money ahead of the quest for spirit; we get hopeless because what we yearn for seems impossible; we despair and think of suicide. Crucifixion is an ongoing reality, a day-to-day reality. Some people wake up on the cross and go to bed on the cross. Their only peace is the dreamless sleep which brings deep happiness.
As Wm Blake said,
"We were made for Joy and Woe, [We were made for joy and woe] and when this we rightly know, through the world we safely go. Joy and Woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine."
"Joy" and "woe" are softer than "crucifixion" and "resurrection," but they mean the same as far as our daily lives are concerned.
Crucifixion -- or woe -- comes in many forms, and the most subtle are perhaps the most painful. There is pain that goes far deeper than gettin glaid off or becoming rent-poor. It's what is called "the pain of the compressed left side."
This expression originated several centuries with the philosopher who was most influential in shaping modern thought. This man was Rene Descartes, a brilliant mathematician and very wise in his dreams too. Descartes was a prominent philosopher; unfortunately he formulated the wicked theory that the mental world is alive and of high consequence, and the material world is dead and of little consequence. Can you imagine the awful consequences of this philosophy? Nature has no mind and is therefore dead and of little consequence except to be exploited.
Descartes is the one who coined the phrase, "I think therefore I am," which has been transformed in our day to "I shop therefore I am!"
Just before formulating this philosophy, he had a significant dream. In it he was trying to walk in a strong wind. Other people were walking upright but he was bent over to his left. His left side was scrunched down or compressed. Descartes evidently knew in his dreams what we have discovered in the 20th century, that the left side of the body corresponds to the right lobe of the brain. The left side of the body and the right brain favor feelings, music, and touch; the other side, which was normal in his dream, favors abstractions like law and ethics, the measurement of time, and in which emotions are repressed. Descartes was predicting in his dream what would happen after his philosophy was published and acclaimed, as it was. Namely, after this split between body and mind seeped its way into the entire culture, people would lose touch with their feelings and their creative drive, which would become scrunched down. Many of today's great thinkers say that this is exactly what has happened in the modern age in western civilization. We are out of touch with the divine within. Here we have the modern form of crucifixion: that we are out of touch with our own inner divinity, the eternal Self.
The kind of Christian worship that grew out of Descartes' thinking is the kind where expressions of emotion are absent; or they may be contrived by preachers trying manipulate congregations -- remember Jimmy Swaggert crying and saying he sinned? Or they are the emotions of the congregation who are persuaded that they are bad in the sight of the Lord. That's why Whitman wrote about animals: "They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins."
Genuine emotions in worship are repressed. Real life, the preacher says, comes later, in heaven -- if we're good. Real life is postponed. Such is the consequent thinking of Cartesian thinking. Enough of Descartes and back to flowers!
Jesus endured one of the most agonizing forms of death devised by man: the cross. And yet he returned in spirit to become one of the most cherished memories of the human race. He would want us to imagine ourselves like the lilies of the field: They die, they re-birth, they rise, they open, they beautify. May our Mother-Father God who is present with us in our pain and sorrow, lead us into new lives of joy and creativity.
We are flowers! Let the people say Amen. Let the people say Ho!
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