The Universe Is Bringing You Flowers
The world feels a bit untrustworthy about now.
I’m not the only one feeling a bit anxious. It could be the climate and the lack of snow, watching the news, thinking about war, or anticipating the U.S. election (which feels as if we all might lose whatever way it goes). Or I could just be anxious thinking about my only child who lives 2,000 miles away.
But Eric Butterworth reminded me recently in his book Celebrate Yourself! that it’s been said, “You can trust a universe that brings you flowers.”
A world that makes snapdragons and sunflowers and orchids and peonies? And poppies and pansies and bachelor buttons? We must trust this!
What other choice do we have?
My BFF has been painting wildflowers for a while now. And I’m proud to say she’s celebrating her very first art show installed right in Tamworth, New Hampshire.
Erica is an accomplished poet, but a number of years ago she took up watercolors and oils. And a local public library was excited to hang her first show. I went to the opening reception—and decided it was the coolest venue ever.
When you are in a library, there are multiple nooks inside the shelves of books. Everywhere I turned, there it was, her art hanging on the wall. Some are small, no more than a foot high, and others span a significant wall width. It makes any visitor stop in your tracks—because you expect to find only plastic-covered books—but instead, you see a vibrant piece of art pop up before you.
She has captured stunning moments and faces of girls growing up—alongside landscapes of wildflowers—sometimes even girls and flowers together.
It made me think, "This show is all about landscapes and face-scapes!" And her color palette is vibrant and alive, especially now, mid-winter.
There were at least 40 or 50 people wandering about the library, admiring her work. Every time the door opened, a friend, family member, or member of the community came in to celebrate with wide smiles and big eyes—neighbors and sons and relatives and work colleagues and yoga girls and other writers and artists.
A young woman who worked in the library kept shaking her head at growing gathering of people and said to my BFF, “You are so loved!”
This is what a memorial service or funeral should feel like. Imagine if you could observe your own celebration, and it’s joyous rather than sad. It’s as if the universe is saying, “This is your life!” And the door just keeps opening again and again to people coming in, arms full of vases of flowers, ready to hug you.
One of my favorite paintings, which is almost 5 feet tall (almost as big as my BFF and I are), is not quite finished yet, so it’s unframed. But it is hanging there just the same, still drying.
This is the way life is, isn’t it?
In our own libraries, it's as if portraits and landscapes from different moments of our lives are tucked around corners of our room. Some are older, representing who we once were—revealing some nugget of our past. But then there are the canvases about today that are still wet with paint.
This is what my BFF says she loves about oils over watercolors. You can fix something that is not what you want it to be yet. You can paint over it.
Where would you like to have a redo?
What would you like to paint over, and make anew?
Louis Riel—who was a bit of a fanatical rebel and politician in Canada in the late 1800s, once commented about the Métis Nation of Ontario: “My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they wake, it will be the artists who give them back their souls.”
It IS the artists who will give us back our souls.
Go find one. Or connect to the one inside yourself.
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