One Magnolia

a devotional for spring

Photo by Giacomo Carra on Unsplash

how many flowers
show their faces to the sun
in places
no human
has ever tread.

how many blooms
bloom only for God, 

for God and for the bumblebees, 
passing to and fro like priests
in the secret cloisters of the woods

drunk on their devotion
and heavy with hymn.

It was a busy weekend, getting acquainted with our potential new dog through a two-night sleepover. Lots of running around to get her tired out, lots of playing fetch and letting her explore and watching the two dogs wrestle merrily on the lawn. Seeing our home and yard through fresh eyes, for good and for ill.

One afternoon, I happened to be following the dogs around the yard when they wandered into a landscape area that the previous homeowners planted with all kinds of random ornamentals. It’s always been a strange little spot. A thick carpet of creeping thyme serves as groundcover, colonized here and there by vetch and other weeds, and the whole area is punctuated with random shrubs and small trees, like mock orange and lavender and poppies. Some of the plants have labels, some don’t, so I’m always playing a guessing game of what’s what.

Since we moved in five years ago, there’s this one shrub in that area that has always mystified me. It clearly wants to be a larger branching thing, possibly even a small tree, but the label faded in the elements long ago and it has never presented me with any easily-identifiable characteristics. No buds, no flowers, no fruit…nothing but pretty bright green leaves in the summer.

But on this one afternoon, as I followed the dogs into the spot, I glanced over at the little shrub and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

There, at the end of exactly one branch, was exactly one perfect pink magnolia flower.

Stunned, I waded through the thyme to take a closer look, and sure enough, all of the years of wondering were over. The mystery shrub is a young magnolia.

After a quick search online, I now know that it takes about a decade for magnolias to start blooming. This means, movingly, that our previous homeowners—a sweet elderly couple—planted something that they knew it was unlikely they would ever be able to fully enjoy.

There is a touching generosity about the idea that we can create, plant, or begin something that we know we will not see the ending of. It takes a certain kind of courage to think that way, to give away the feeling of triumph, to let someone else have the victory, to have the pleasure. As a very comfort-driven person myself, I am not always good at the idea of deferring a good thing. I want the good thing now, please, with extra whipped cream.

But in that one magnolia, I see both beauty and conviction. A gift from the past, waiting until now to breathe. A long, long winter, finally broken like a spell.

I ask myself: what seeds am I willing to plant whose fruit I will never see? What future soul may I bless, even if I never know their name?

Some acts of reconciliation are grand, earth-shattering, life-changing. And some bloom unseen in a strange corner of the yard.

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