Consider the tulip,
how long ago
someone’s hands planted a bulb
and gave to this place
a living scrap of beauty,
how it rises every spring
out of the same soil,which is, of course,
not at all the same soil,
but new.

Consider the six red petals,
the yellow at the center,
the soft green rubber of the stem,
how it bows to the world.
How, the longer you set beside the tulip,
the more you want to bow, too.

It is this way with kindness:
someone plants in someone else
a bit of beauty-
a kind word, perhaps, or a touch,
the gift of their time or their smile.
And years later, in that inner soil,
that beauty emerges again,
pushing aside the dead leaves,
insisting on loveliness,
celebration of the one who planted it,
the one who perceives it, and
the fertile place where it has grown.

~Rosemary Wahtola Trimmer

So many interactions we have every day come to us through no effort of our own. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. In our individualistic culture it is easy to forget that we are intricately connected to a whole web of unseen, unknown actors who make our lives move and flow. Right now I am sitting at my car dealership while people who know ‘stuff’ are servicing my car, something I know nothing about and cannot do on my own. Every time I enjoy a meal at a restaurant, I may have a human encounter with my server but the people who actually cook and plate my food with an attention to ingredients and visual appeal are behind the scenes. I know nothing of their lives. They know nothing of mine. Yet, in the work they do we are connected through their skill, their labor. This truth is repeated over and over again in all the moments and days of living. Those highway workers who are repaving a road in the hot, humid weather. The people working now to restore power to those homes affected by outages from a recent storm. Once you begin to think about all the various lives that make our lives more livable, it becomes a tsunami of shadows. So many. So many.

I have been thinking about this so much not because of people necessarily. I have been thinking about it because of my garden. While the tulips that are mentioned in the poem above are long gone, other miraculous blooms have taken their place. Mostly, I did nothing to bring about their beauty. While I was likely complaining about the cold a few moths ago, these plants have been silently waiting to spring back to life once again. Bee balm. Phlox. Joe Pie Weed. Hostas. Waiting underground to dazzle me with beauty and connection to something I had very little do with. This connection with, not only the unseen people that grace my life, but with Creation itself always stops me in my tracks. As I watch the various bees…pollinators all…busily drinking nectar to carry on to other plants feeding, perhaps the food I will eat, grown by a farmer who is invisible to me helps me to feel a part of the vastness of the Universe. All the while I am stunned by color and fragrance and breathtaking beauty. 

And of all the many things I did not do, there is the sunflower. Back again this summer growing to a little over eight feet now, it waves its leaves and blossoms outside my kitchen window sometimes startling me. Is someone looking in my window? Oh, no. It is simply this brilliant yellow gift from an unknown, unseen spirit. I planted no seeds yet there it is. The honeybees have been visiting it and now the goldfinches devouring its seeds, singing mightily a song of joy at finding a gift so beautiful, so welcoming. If I could sing as sweetly, I would.

It is so easy for me to walk through my days single-focused on all the things I need to do, must accomplish. Some of them are within my ability. But most of the wheels that keep my life moving are spinning through nothing I did or have the ability to do. So I must do as the poet says the tulip does. I must bow to the world. And then bow again…and again…and again.