Florists are big players in our high streets. Our supermarkets are not far behind. And rightly so. Even in lockdown we should inhabit a poorer world if we lacked flowers for big occasions and for everyday cheer-ups. Roses for some, sweet peas for others may be the rule. We all have our favourites. We all fall for colour and fragrance in a world that might have been made otherwise. Shakespeare gave us a haunting line when he said that daffodils ‘take the winds of March with beauty.’
Suppose there was nothing in our environment to make us use words such as ‘beauty’. Like the flowers, that could be an extra, an ornament. But in fact it is a valued staple component of our surroundings. It is something we acknowledge, something we have views about – in our cheerful choice of domestic décor, in the design of our church interiors.
But beauty has its dark side. There is such a thing as a terrible beauty. And that is something that poets can glimpse when the rest of us pass by. Beauty is a matter of light and shade, of harmony and discord. It comes naturally in our gardens and flower-shows. It comes from the brush, the chisel and the pen of humankind. It is not a simple alpha-plus product. It has balance and intricacies. Its worth has to be learned.
How much of this Jesus had in mind when he talked of the lilies of the field, we cannot know. We can know that he said this: ‘even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’. And he went on to say that if God clothed the grass in such loveliness, how much more does he provide for our needs and more. Flowers tell us something about the Creator.
We have no need to make frenzied appeals to God to keep us in being. Nor need we fret if, forgetting our prayers, we fail to remember that our creator gives us all we need and more. It has to be said, of course, that in a world familiar with famine and disease there is more to be said. We have no right to shut out of our thinking everything that is beyond price. We have no right to be callous. But when we think of the good things to enjoy day after day we can only say: ’Thank you’ as Joanna Lumley did when she saw the northern lights.
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