“The simple rose, at each moment of its slow blossoming, is as open as it can be. The same is true of our lives.” Mark Nepo I imagine there are people who have experienced “becoming” in one great flash of epiphany and insight. Although there is something compelling about such a possibility, I’m pretty sure that my own journey is bound to be much more like the path of the rose, opening as much as I can each day.  When I ponder a rose or tree or any growing plant in the natural world, it does not appear to me that these living things get impatient with their own unfolding. A rose does not consider itself lagging or lacking at any single moment of its blossoming. It doesn’t feel that it has let itself or anyone else down by stretching only as far as possible in one day. I have never sat down and asked a flower directly, but it seems to me that a rose doesn’t view it’s time of budding as inferior or less than when it is wide open and blooming. I don’t perceive that it is anything but content to rest when the winter snows are deep.  Any gardener knows that things in the natural world grow according to their own internal clock. We can help nurture the plants by pulling weeds, picking off the bugs and watering a bit when the rains haven’t come. But we can’t pull on the leaves or tender shoots to make them grow faster, in fact such rough handling would surely tear or harm the plant. The wisdom of the rose reminds me to see myself as whole at every stage journey. I can nuture the tender shoots of own soul, but have the insight to know that I am resting, growing or stretching as far as possible in one day. I am all that I have been, all that I will become, and I am right where I need to be.

I was embraced and enlivened by the peace and beauty of Brookgreen today…

— Photos and reflection by Nancy L.