One Hundred Roses
JENNIFER CAMP
4 min read ⭑
My hands are stained with red. Sticky with residue from tiny berries I pulled from slender stems. I planted two wild strawberry plants in October after Justin and I bought them on a whim. They were in the natives section of a nursery by the ocean, where we stopped briefly after pumpkin hunting — the first time visiting a pumpkin patch without a child in tow.
I was curious about how the plants would do — if they would flourish, what size berries they would produce. And now, seven months later, they have spread from their former small mounds to cover the entire raised bed. Yes, they are thriving, but their taste is strange, their sweetness almost saccharine, and the berries are unfamiliar and small. But still, they are lovely. They intrigue me with how the plants spread above ground to root and grow.
What amazing choices beauty innately makes to live.
The New York Public Library
We have just returned home after a week away, and the garden feels deliciously out of control, like it is the boss of beauty, decadent in abundance, with roses exploding in mad bouquets of white, pink, lavender, purple and red. Upon moving to this home three years ago, Justin joked, “There must be a hundred rose bushes out there!” That number felt crazy to me. How could there possibly be a hundred?
But then I counted them: one hundred exactly, distributed among the front and back gardens. And now, in late May, with the days perfectly warm, thousands of rose petals unfurl in exquisite layers. Then they wilt and fall, breezes pulling the soft petals from their corollas and littering the ground.
Such beauty demands attention—and I try, with the strength of my mind, body and heart, to absorb it all.
On the edges of each day — the beginning of the sun’s rise and set, as well as afternoons when I am home — I go outside and visit the flowers. I want to care for them. I want to participate in their beauty somehow. It is not a matter of giving back to them something they have given to me. No, that would mean they expected — or needed — my attention. But, really, they are what they are, indifferent to my presence. And for their outlandish beauty, I love them. They are what they are, and they would still look beautiful and perfect and wild and miraculous if they could never be beheld.
The flowers do not need outside appreciation to exist. Yet they do exist, and I ponder how God must delight in each flower’s delicate texture, the curve of a stem, the arching blooms stretching to the sun. Their beauty both quiets and energizes me. When I let my heart — and not just my senses — absorb it, I am more myself; I am aware of my state of becoming — more whole, more free, more like beauty, too.
Beauty, I am here.
When I was a child, and the February almond orchards outside our home were thick with white and pink blossoms, I would walk the long, straight rows, ankles wet with the grass’s morning dew. The air’s sweetness blanketed everything — my uplifted face, the dogs running under the branches, the bees buzzing with each flower’s kiss. As I walked, I felt my spirit’s weight: she was the one walking, the spirit God made, inhabiting a human form.
“Light from the window illuminates the bottom left corner of the pages, and the book is surely dancing, a paper bird longing to take flight.”
No matter our age, our situation, our mindset, beauty reminds us of what we have always known. It calls forth identity beyond moments, boundaries and time. Beauty shows us what is real is more than what we can, with our senses, behold.
Keep me here, Lord.
My fingers stained with berry juice — the berries are so small I hold at least thirty ruby jewels in my palm — I go inside and deposit them in one of the small blue bowls my daughter gifted me for my birthday last year. I turn the handles on the kitchen faucet, run cold water over and through the fingers of my hands, and look out. Through the open windows above the sink, I watch tiny leaves that look golden in the afternoon sunlight drift horizontally and down, falling like fairy dust from the tall branches of the olive tree. I turn off the water and dry my hands. The breeze’s breath continues to blow.
I am inside but still outside, in it. She — my spirit — is out there. She knows where she belongs. She knows she is beauty too.
I open the refrigerator and get out broccoli to roast with chicken for dinner. I wash the stalks under the water, flexing with my fingertips the tender green florets. With beauty, there is so much to touch, to smell, to taste. I have more respect — and less fear — for beauty now. I am no longer scared that it feels fleeting. I am okay with it moving through me, with it being bigger than this moment. (No, it is immeasurable, isn’t it?) And we do not need to consume beauty or control it. We need not strive to imagine we could ever make it stay.
As I write these words inside the house now, the air of a fan across the room ruffles the pages of an open book propped upon a metal stand on a wooden cabinet. Light from the window illuminates the bottom left corner of the pages, and the book is surely dancing, a paper bird longing to take flight. I look down at my hands: clean, no sign of red remains.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Will you pause and go outside? Will you spend a few minutes outside today looking for Heaven in the beauty God created for you? The sky? The trees? The flowers?
Jennifer Camp is a poet and listener who delights in investigating the deeper places of the heart. She founded Gather Ministries with her husband, Justin, is Editor-at-Large of Rapt Interviews and manages Loop Collective, a community for women who reject complacency and pursue connection with God.
