It’s happened again. Last year, sometime in August I believe, I posted a photo of a sunflower that had planted itself in my garden. While I could logically know it was probably an errant seed dropped by a bird or one of the pesky squirrels that raid my birdfeeders, its presence still seemed magic to me.  I reflected on the gift of it and how so often the amazing things that come into our lives do so without any help from us. All the many invisible lines of connection that we are aware of…or mostly unaware of…that bring surprise and delight. The many ways unknown people support us and make our living possible and often easier. 

Well, it’s happened again. I did not plant this sunflower that has been growing and now is blooming just outside my kitchen window. But this sunflower…this SUNFLOWER…is bigger and bolder than last year’s guest. It started growing in late May while I was away from home on a long trip and has continued to get taller and wider every day for the last several weeks until now, every time I am standing at my kitchen sink, I jump thinking someone is peeking in. Oh, no. Just enormous green leaves. Oh, no. Just stupendous yellow flowers. Oh, no. Just a hungry bumblebee or a delicate monarch butterfly taking a rest among petals. 

Watching its growing progress, I have laughed to myself. Apparently the Universe surmised that I had really not received the message of the volunteer sent to wake me up last summer and so decided to do it up big this year. Not one yellow sphere but many are flanking the side of my house. I have stopped counting and now only wait in anticipation. How many will appear? The one thing I must do, am compelled to do, is to pay attention. Pay attention to the brilliance of golden color and the leaves sized to be helpful clothing Adam and Eve. Pay attention and be in awe. Pay attention and remember…I did not do this. I did not do this. 

It has, again, led me to ponder all those things that come into my life that I did not cause or create. All the people who work behind the scenes to bring food and energy and water and heat and cooling to my every day. All the bees who are busily pollinating and the food that is then grown by hands other than my own. The teachers who are instructing children who will then become the people who help me do all the important yet mundane acts that keep a house, a car, a bank account, a garden, a library, a life humming along in this beautiful and complex world. And all the researchers and scientists who are doing experiments over and over again to find cures and hope…all faces most of us will never see…yet whose work may be just what is needed now or in the future. 

This sunflower…this amazing, amazing sunflower that showed up on my doorstep is an invitation to remember all these invisible beings who flutter in the shadows of our lives. Of course the poet Mary Oliver has something to say about sunflowers:

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky
sugars of the sun.

Gardeners will tell you that in this growing season much has come earlier than usual. The sunflower that surprised me last August has been supplanted by its genetic relative arriving in June and blooming in July. ‘Burnished disks…leaves like ship masts…filling the day with the sticky sugar of the sun.’ A wake up call. An invitation. A gift. 

And for this human, gratitude beyond measure.