The Flower Within
A Meditation for Easter
We are in the Netherlands this Easter, the land of tulips and windmills, canals and dams, history and art. Last year at this time I posted a meditation for Holy Week about tulips. With a few edits, I offer it again, as an Easter meditation. In one way or another, it seems to me that we all need to rise. Rise from infirmity. Rise from lethargy. Rise from despair. Rise from hate and division. Somehow it inspires me to know that the tulip bulb, a seemingly powerless vegetable with papery skin, contains within it the entire tulip flower. A brilliantly colored flower that is a symbol of spring, the tulip rises from the tomb of its bulb after having been buried in the cold earth all winter long. So with hope, and a prayer for all of our risings, I offer once more, The Flower Within.
I recently learned that inside every tulip bulb there lives a whole tulip (see it here!). It’s in miniature form, but all there. Stem, leaves, and even flower are right there, inside that bulb. When it’s planted in the fall, the bulb sends roots down into the soil. All winter long, the bulb protects that tiny flower. And once spring begins, the bulb feeds the flower and all its parts, nourishing it with its own body, its own self, until there is not much left of the bulb at all. Then the flower is on it’s own, getting all of its nourishment through those roots the bulb had put down in the fall. But wonder of wonders, before dying, the bulb produces several new bulblets, or daughter bulbs, which grow around the empty tomb that was their mother. Each bulblet encloses a genetically identical tulip. The daughter bulbs have inherited their mother’s DNA, ensuring that this tulip will not end in a single bloom, but will rise, again and again, for many generations.
It seems to me that any life, be it that of a tulip bulb, Jesus, you or me, must do the same. We must preserve the flower within us. We must protect that flower, and nourish it, because that is where our Divinity lies. We must invest our lives in that flower, so that in due time it will bloom, giving beauty and goodness to the world around it. And when we have used ourselves up, poured ourselves out to bring our inner beauty and goodness to flower in and for this world, we must pass on that “DNA,” those life lessons we’ve learned along the way, to our daughter and son bulbs, or to anyone who will listen. Anyone who will watch. Anyone who will love with an open heart, so that the flower of Divinity, which is our true self, will not die, but live on; echoing through generations, in the silence of an empty tomb.
To learn more about the fascinating life of a tulip bulb click here.
Incredible photo!
Yes, to the nourishing!