Might As Well Flower
'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.'
People the world over recognize flowers, gloriously clothed flowers, as flowers despite their stunning differences, one variety from another. What better symbol could Norbert Capek have chosen when he set out to create a ritual celebrating the simultaneous glorious diversity and holy oneness of his Unitarian congregation in Prague one hundred and two years ago this month?
More than our universal recognition of flowers as flowers whatever the species, perhaps not quite so universally but on the whole, we adore flowers for all the reasons Kate Farrell mentions in her poem: the shapes, the colors, the fragrance. IRL they delight our senses, while as symbols, honed over centuries through common usage, folklore and poetry, they convey messages, playfully, elegantly, ardently: from baby’s breath for everlasting love to tansy for declaring war, with larkspur for levity and red roses for love and black eyed Susan for justice in between.
These meanings we impose on flowers are just that–human impositions–not intrinsic characteristics, but the colors, the shapes, the fragrances, the delicacy or sturdiness of the blossoms, whether they bloom at night or in the morning or later afternoon–these are biological properties of the individual floral species themselves. And as far as biology is concerned, flowers have but one purpose and it isn’t to symbolize human intentions, desires or attributes. The purpose of flowers is the continuance of their plants’ species. Their colors, shapes, fragrances and nectar serve to attract insects and other animals that spread pollen and seeds to ensure the survival of the species. That’s the message I’m taking away from our Flower Ceremony this year.
Kate Farrell concludes her poem “Thanks to Flowers” with these lines: 'life goes by anyway; you might as well flower'.
I say, yes, and life, as it goes by, brings drudgery sometimes and danger, cruelty and heartbreak, disappointment and uncertainty, sorrow and betrayal, and still we might as well flower. Because the antidote, one of the antidotes, to all the hardness and harshness of life is the blessing each of us brings into the world with our very being. For someone, somewhere, perhaps without our knowing it, each of us, with the uniqueness of our being, our color, our shape, our fragrance, our nectar, transforms drudgery into cheer and danger into security. We ward off cruelty and solace broken hearts. We sow possibility in the aftermath of disappointment and provide steadfastness amidst uncertainty. We hold space for the holiness of sorrow and engender trust in the wake of betrayal.
In times such as these depression, anger, defeat and fatigue can tempt us in hiding, camouflage, washing out our colors, diluting our fragrances, muting our voices. Yet all around us wise voices are urging us to do just the opposite. To be out, loud and proud. To remember that joy is resistance. To refuse to obey/submit to facism in advance. To these voices I add my own. We “might as well flower” isn’t enough. We have an imperative to flower. To pour every bit of energy we can summon into flowering, into dazzling the world with the gorgeous colors of our personality, the exquisite shape of our movement through the world, the pungent sweetness of our spirit. Not to attract pollinators and other animals to spread our nectar and seeds–though if you are of the age and inclination for biological reproduction, then yes, absolutely that! It is imperative that the rest of us, all of us, really, flower lushly, flamboyantly, persistently because our survival, individually and all together, depends on it.
Just as each of us is a flower in the bouquet of this congregation, an irreplaceable part of its collective beauty by virtue of our sacred uniqueness, so too each of us has a vital, irreplaceable role to play in the survival of our species and the healing of our world. A role that demands we call forth and unleash and live into the fullness of our beauty–our innate, indisputable, indestructible, transformative, one-of-kind of beauty.
We’ve got a lot going on here this morning, so I set out to write a much shorter, more nihilistic homily, saying only, “Life right now in 2025 kind of sucks but we might as flower anyway because what else can we do?” But the homily had a mind of its own. By which, of course, I mean that the Unitarian Universalist theology in which I am grounded and by which I have been shaped for more than fifty years, together with the workings of the Spirit, turned me toward defiance and hope. We might as well flower— deliberately, extravagantly, kaleidoscopically, redolently flower, because that’s what will save us. (And, what else can we do anyway?) Amen
