This morning, walking through a city park, I noticed goldenrod amid a riot of color and texture in a long strip of garden. That flower had made an appearance a few days earlier while I was reading Mary Oliver’s collection of poems, Devotions. “Goldenrod” was the second and last poem I read that day. An allergy sufferer, goldenrod isn’t my favorite fall flower, but one can’t argue with its sunny beauty, especially when it mixes with purple New England asters on roadsides or in fields.
Mary Oliver’s poem wandered through goldenrod’s possibilities: Offering nectar to visiting bees for their honey. Brightening what might otherwise be a barren void. Rustled by a sudden wind, the blooms swayed and caught the poet’s famous attention. She watched them bend and straighten and scatter their golden dust.
“… they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend, / they rise in a stiff sweetness, / in the pure peace of giving / one’s gold away.”
Stunned into stillness, I sat, savoring the image. “Giving one’s gold away.”
Isn’t that how Jesus lived? How we are called to be in this world?
Bending. Flexible? And giving ourselves away?
Didn’t Jesus bend to listen to someone’s story? To scoop dirt from the road and make healing paste for the blind beggar’s eyes? To write in the sand as a woman’s unmasked accusers drifted away?
When he plucked ripe grain-heads from their stalks? Or sat on a rock in the desert or on the roadside to rest or to listen? Wouldn’t he have bent low to notice creatures that passed by or the plants?
Did he bend under Spirit-weight when he breathed life into his followers?
In all his bending and being and breathing, wasn’t he constantly giving himself away? Himself that was all Love—restless Love longing to move outward and find new homes to set ablaze? Surely, Love bending to the other is natural. Godly.
Giving its gold away.
What of my being scatters when life pushes and pulls one way then another? When I bend, what, I wonder, do I offer? I hope it’s Love, at least part of it. After all, isn’t that what life provides—opportunities to open our empty spaces to Love—so we can give it away?
For Visio Divina: Morning in the park
How very beautiful and yet challenging.
Glad you enjoyed the column, Olga. Thanks for writing.
Mary, Golden Rod isn’t the culprit. Ragweed is the plant that affects allergy sufferers. Unless you have an allergy to GR.
Golden Rod is a pollinator plant that bees love. It is a native here on good, ole Cape Cod. As a matter of fact, today, at a Master Gardeners’ workshop, Autumn Joy, I came home with a Licorice-scented, golden rod plant to place in my garden.
Don’t stick your nose in the ragweed! Love you, Carol
I appreciate the info and good advice, Carol! I seem to have allergies to loads of airborne particulates, but no need to malign goldenrod! Thanks for writing.