You can learn a lot of things from the flowers

I am not generally a big Disney fan, but this song spoke so beautifully to me today, in spite of Alice's rather annoying high pitched accompaniment!

No matter how clever us humans are, I think of nature as the ultimate teacher, healer, and guide. 

It encompasses both the harmony and chaos of the universe. 

The Buddha is quoted to have said

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower, our whole life would change "

I see it. 

I am changed.

When we get so busy we don't have time to look at flowers, don't make time to marvel at them, when we take them for granted, live in isolation from them, or think of them as pretty but pointless, I think really we lose something precious.

Nothing we humans could ever manufacture will ever be as beautiful, perfect or powerful, as a single flower.

They really know how to live!

These formidable and amazing things can bust their way through concrete, grow without soil halfway up a building, and grow all the better for having poo thrown on them! 

Flowers support one another in a garden, sharing and exchanging nutrients by their root systems, sustaining life for visiting insects, butterflies, birds.

They follow the seasons, obey the laws of night and day, opening and closing according to the sun and moon.

Animals intuitively know which flowers to eat, which will help with indigestion, with sickness, which will give them a high.

Flowers are given in friendship. They are given in love.

Essential oils, flower essences, concoctions, balms and creams can soothe us when we are irritable, working to relax our entire nervous system from the inside out or the outside in. They work their magic on bruises, sores, injuries and sickness.

They became the symbol for the peace movement, because of the lessons they could teach the world.

Christmas, Easter, and so many other celebrations have their most ancient roots in nature, in fertility, an acknowledgement of the circle of life and death in an endless cycle and many of the symbolic flowers remain, although their meaning is hidden.

The power and beauty of a single flower is beyond amazing!

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