Sunday, April 24, 2011

Flower Communion and Family

Today was my first Flower Communion in Eau Claire. We had a lovely ceremonial procession of bringing the flowers forward in a Spring Display and later in the service picking a flower brought by someone else.

This was a different Flower Communion than other years. This was my first Flower Communion as the minister of my own congregation. I also had a sense of the true meaning of Spring. There was real joy on the faces of these Wisconsiners as they paraded with their Spring bounty. In Georgia we appreciated the flowers, but I had not been through a long, hard winter. This was one hard winter. Can you say 22 inches of snowfall in one day! It was a balmy 60 degrees here in Eau Claire and beautiful.

My husband brought a vase for us to carry our flowers to and from church today. This is much more practical than my typical wet paper towel handling of Flower Communion flowers. We took our vase out to lunch with us after service. Our waitress noticed how lovely the flowers were and we admired them with her. It was then we noticed how different all of our flowers are. Each flower speaks a lot about each member of our family. Karl picked roses, which his grandfather was famous for growing. Kiernan, my super creative ballet boy, chose a very tall and bright yellow daisy. Ehren, who is all sports and boy, picked a blue flower. I picked the sad little yellow flower that someone had dropped and a few people had stepped on.

We carry our flowers and remember Spring. We carry our differences and they are also beautiful.