Sunflowers

Yesterday was my day to visit the two retired doctors (they live in different communities.) They are continuing their journeys through frailty and fading memories, and I so appreciate their gentle presence. I was able to report to them that I had met a lively young doctor while visiting a skilled nursing community earlier that day.  They were both excited to know more about her. I think she is a kindred spirit of theirs for she seems to embody the same spirit that I sense they did in their work: that is, one of real engagement with the patients. I pray that one day she, too, will be able to look back on her practice with gratitude.   

In his entry for October 5 in Blessings of the Daily, Brother Victor writes that while arranging sunflowers in a vase for chapel, he recalled a passage from Centering by Caroline Richards.  I checked online and there is a book by the same title by M.C. (Mary Caroline) Richards.  This may be the book he is referencing, but I cannot say for sure.   

   

It was early fall...sunflowers were in bloom in my garden, their wide orange faces high in the air on spindly stems. It was the season of the harvest, of withering. It was seed time. And there is no air so intoxicating as that season's. I opened my door one early morning and looked out. All the sunflowers were turned toward the rising sun. The sense of outburst in the air was unmistakable, at the same time a sense of distillation. The seeds had all formed and were about to go their ways from the mother plant. My heart was indescribably full of the simultaneous experience of dying and bearing forth, of levity, of the oracle's message of Decrease and Deliverance, of ... growth through time, and the ultimate release of ... perfected powers through "death" - and all because of sunflowers.   

   

​And, I would add, old doctors and monks.   

  

Blessings on your journey.  ​