Walking up the driveway, back home again from the park, I look at the dandelion stem in my hand and wonder, How many times did I walk over one, fail to notice one, or otherwise miss the everyday miracle of this plant? The dandelion is the only flower that represents three celestial bodies during different phases of its life – sun, moon and stars. The yellow flower of the plant resembles the sun. The puffball, when it has gone to seed, looks like the moon. And the dispersing seeds of the plant are like stars.
In his essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the energy and joy human beings can derive from nature. He saw everything in the natural world as an “incarnation of God” and an “expositor of the divine mind.” [One sentence at the end of his essay] crystallizes the content of the entire work, the oft-quoted words: “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” Dandelions give us the opportunity to do just that.
This message is excerpted from “Dandelions” by Jennifer Grant in the May/June 2023 Gather magazine. Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
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