35. The roses aren't always in bloom. . .
It's all very well for people to admonish you to stop and smell the roses, but until about a century ago, roses bloomed once, for perhaps two weeks, in mid-spring. That's why they came to be synonymous with evanescent youth and beauty. Maybe it's symptomatic of our youth-chasing culture that in the 19th century breeders began working on those few roses which re-bloomed briefly in fall, and have eventually created roses that now bloom all summer.
Still, even those roses aren't always in bloom. So even though there's time to stop and smell the roses when you walk the labyrinth, it can't always be done. You might have to find something else to "be present to" and appreciate.
Sometimes that's hard.
Other times it's nearly impossible.
Two days ago, I learned that my beloved, young, healthy, strong mother had been found dead in her home. The screaming hysterics didn't last, though I don't imagine I'm through with them. I'm in that numb zone familiar to those who are familiar with grief--the zone in which you make and receive about 500 frantic phone calls, talk fairly reasonably to funeral directors and pastors, just as if you really know what you're doing or saying, hunt down plane tickets and fill suitcases, and crowd together with other suffering family members and then find yourself laughing but avoiding crying.
Don't worry, the crying will be back soon enough. My mother is dead!! How can the world possibly go on without Mother in it?! The idea is incomprehensible, terrifying, obscene!
But I'm not the only one familiar with grief. Neither are you. Jesus is "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" Isa 53:3. He has walked this labyrinth before me, and walks it beside me and my family, and beside you, too.
And the roses will bloom again.
This I know.
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