Waylaid in the Pocket Garden of Vite
[“(B)ecause God’s goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another” (Thomas Aquinas [1225-74], Summa Theologica, #47).]
[“One thing I have asked . . . : That I may . . . behold the beauty of the LORD” (Ps 27:4).]
O Lover,
Wary of Herr Frost, my spouse and I nevertheless made our annual Mothers Day foray to Vite Greenhouses in SW Michigan. Sharryl, a horticultural wizard routinely luring neighbors near and far into the garden of her floral expertise, generates these occasions. I, her man Friday, am the secondary beneficiary. On this particular occasion I, now an authorized Rollator operator, provided slow back-up. Although Vite’s had long been a special place for us, its pocket garden artificiality notwithstanding, this time I got myself ambushed. What follows is my feeble attempt to bring that experience to words.
Rolling into the greenhouse in Sharryl’s tow, I was immediately assailed at the level of sense: the tactility of the humid air, the scent of humus, the happy hum of floral aficionados against the background of orchestral music. But most powerful of all was the visual orgy of color crowding the paths, jostling along the tiered shelves, and creating an acres-large canopy of basketed flowers. A sampler: innumerable varieties of begonias hanging, strutting, crying out “look at me!”; numerous aisles flanking plethoric palettes of petunias; and closer to the ground stunningly variegated varieties of coleus and geraniums. It was Eden redux. Having parked off to the side, I was transfixed by this biospheric riot of color.
So what was going on? In retrospect, it seems that I was being moved on two interlocking fronts—profusion and aesthetic—the amalgam of which had me awash in wonder. Regarding profusion, there was the intimation that this innumerability being witnessing was but a microcosm of everything from the quark to the cosmos, and that (a la Thomas) the inadequacy of all representations of You was implicit in this proliferation.
But it was on the plane of Your relationship with the aesthetic that I was principally moved. My sense of wonder found expression primarily in a series of questions, most of them rhetorical. Is not my response to the floral, more felt than thought, intuited than cognizable, laced with an awe more numinous than amazement? How is one to account for the soft power of beauty, especially in an environment including so much that is disheartening and numbing to both mind and spirit? How is it that such jaw dropping beauty can recurringly become the antechamber to discombobulating and oneing Love? How is it that this profusion enveloping me, this lavishness, this extravagance, repeatedly and inexplicably bleeds into awareness of You at the very innermost of my being? Why am I finding myself unsurprised that I can slip so readily (so inexorably?) from this vista to You whom I have long since named Beauty Itself? As I gaze into this tsunami of form, scent, texture, and color, do I not find the aspiration to a pure and absolute apophaticism (“sans images”) largely theoretical at best, deadly at worst? Finally, what sort of One would at the 13.8 billion year cosmic milestone, and counting, be inundating me with that which I am here witnessing? Who all are You?
As I was rolling out of Vita’s the subtle interior shift, like from black and white to color, from map coordinates to sacred ground, lingered. Within my innermost a sheen, not entirely unlike that without, had me aware of an unusual measure of tranquility, of peace. And, like other similar occasions, I wanted to clutch the moment in the face of the ravages of time. Rather than conceptualizing Julian’s “all shall be well,” I was experiencing it, however momentarily and fragmentarily.
So end my scratchings issuing from a trip to Vite Greenhouses, a co-created microcosm of Your all-encompassing handiwork. To paraphrase from the Sanctus: “The totality of the cosmos is indeed alive with Your effulgence!”
