Flowers are frequent attenders at Meeting for Worship. A vase of azaleas or buttercups or hyacinths garlanded with Queen Ann’s Lace or flocked with Golden Rod claims privilege of place on a table or ledge, where everyone can see it and hear it declaiming its truth. The language of flowers pertains as much to being as doing. It aspires and inspires, clear-eyed as a day’s-eye daisy. It’s a language Friends particularly want to listen to, to listen for, even to grow fluent in. Its syntax emanates in brilliant colorations. To see flowers speak is to hear them shine, and when a soul hears them it can’t help but see them true, the way Moses both saw and heard the great I am. When a table is bedecked with blossoms and trumpet bells, the eyes hear what they see, they follow its meaning. Every flower is a given flower, but most flowers come without tags, beaming at us, waving a little. We want to know who the giver is.
Written by Terry Culleton
