Wildflowers = BEAUTY “Beautiful”
“Can you now recognize beauty where you once saw chaos?”
What if a garden yearned not for care but to be ravished by wilderness? Wildflowers don’t care whether we look at them or not; they grow wherever they wish. Attempts have been made to translate this freedom into predictable practicality without success, because once a flower has been tamed it is no longer a Wildflower.
Amusingly, however, we keep trying to reproduce that magic moment when we saw them blush in wood or field and were so entranced we set ourselves to copy surprise, to reproduce astonishment. It must be something about us that we so long to mirror God’s effects. In the meantime, Wildflowers sleep in earth and clay, and they keep coming up to gladden our hearts and surmount the sadness of all our petty certainties.
Personal, cultural and historical beauty standards evolve. Online dating apps sort by “status”: not a good way to find a Soulmate. Georgia O’Keefe is famous for seeing a bleached cow skull abandoned in a desert landscape as beautiful and teaching us to see that, too.
Today we embrace the Wildflowers in our Tantric Garden, (or more truthfully, Wildflowers embrace us). Traditionally wilderness is an undervalued resource in a planned garden. Gardeners sweep them away to plant something more intentional.
The relevance to our Soulmate Quest is the question of Unintentional Beauty or Beauty Surprise. My question is, Is there any other kind? Beauty questing noisily (and showily!) for admiration is hardly as evocative as beauty that doesn’t care whether we see it or not, doesn’t represent an attempt to “control” or manipulate us and doesn’t position itself in a trophy race.
Wildflowers remind us that we could be overlooking something natural, close at hand. That “something close” could be ourselves! Think how you undervalue your own wildness, the indigenous rather than “acquired” parts of your personality.
Complete the phrase: “I am a natural______.” What? What’s so deep and automatic about you that it seems inborn? This is the level on which you hope to connect with The Beloved. You seek not just the promise of subtler pleasure but a necessary philosophical correction granting you the relaxing peace of evolving into an effortless, endless wonderment that doesn’t require a platform, management or positioning, but merely acceptance of deep joy and gratitude for life’s gifts.
BEAUTIFUL
He said you’re beautiful
I said this carapace of flesh
Is my bad fairy
clamoring for attention like
some approval junkie;
People don’t look at me they
Look over me
Oh well he said
All of us got
Some cross to bear.
Alysse Aallyn 