Matt Alspaugh

After the congregation has brought their flowers forward for plessing during flower communion.

Look at these flowers. I mean, really study them. Be amazed by their variety. Wonder at the different colors — crimson, saffrons, oranges, azure, magenta, violet. Ponder the different shapes and sizes, some singular, some a burst of connected elements. How is it that in all of nature, flowers are such a source of variety and beauty?

In the stretch of evolutionary time, flowers are relatively recent additions to the biosphere. Just a few hundred million years ago, not much time at all, really, flowers did not exist. The plant world was boring, at least to us, if we would have been alive then, dull in color, just the greens and browns of ferns and fungus, and pine trees.  

Somehow the flowering forms came into being, and when they did, a tumultuous variety of color and fragrance, of shape and forms burst forth, in rapidly changing development.

Of course we know that evolution by natural selection led to all this creation. But for this massive variety of flowering forms to emerge, more than just the flowering plants were evolving — insects evolved too.

A process of co-evolution began to occur. The flowering plants needed insects to reliably carry pollen from one plant of their kind to another. The insects needed food in order to be motivated to do this. The flowering plants thrived best if insects visited only their particular variety — they wanted specialist insects; but the insects thrived best if they could dine from numerous flowering sources — they tended toward generalization. So patterns of specialization developed, with some flowers and insects adapting specifically to each other. And patterns of generalization developed too. And these have been in tension, a creative competition. And for millions of years this has been so.

But the story doesn’t end there. According to writer Michael Pollan, we too have co-evolved with flowers. We who garden, who buy or breed or hybridize or even genetically modify our plants may think we are the sole deciders in which floral forms and colors we will be surrounded by.

We may think we choose the flowers — but maybe not. Maybe there is a deeper history of relationship going on. Pollan tells us,

“Could it be that we are drawn instinctively to flowers?

Some evolutionary psychologists have proposed an interesting answer. Their hypothesis goes like this: our brains developed under the pressure of natural selection to make us good foragers, which is how humans have spent 99 per cent of their time on Earth. The presence of flowers is a reliable predictor of future food. People who were drawn to flowers, and who, further, could distinguish among them, would be much more successful foragers than people who were blind to their significance. In time the moment of recognition—much like the quickening one feels whenever an object of desire is spotted in the landscape—would become pleasurable, and the signifying thing a thing of beauty.[1]”

And so the beauty that we see in flowers may be encoding a relationship developed over eons of evolution and natural selection — for all of us, the humans, the insects, and the flowering plants around us.

Last week, I commented on how I experienced Joy — not just in the present moment, but in the future moments and in the past moments. As I recall, I was talking about the joy of anticipation that came in planning a vacation, for example. The pleasure of imagining over and over again where I’d be going, what I’d be doing. I also talked of the joy of satisfaction that comes from remembering such adventures in the weeks, months and years to come.

And, in the moment, for it was not in my notes, I commented on the paradox that this represented — that I talk a lot of being in the present moment as a good thing, and here we were finding joy in the future and in the past.

I’m still thinking about that paradox. It’s kind of been niggling at me? Am I in a spiritual crisis? Is it time to rethink my whole spiritual understanding? Give it all up and find a new line of work?

I think the answer to the paradox is that it’s an evolutionary thing. We’ve evolved, our minds have evolved, to dwell in these various time-spaces. Just as people evolved to notice, understand, and enjoy flowers, people have evolved to understand the flow of time, to name it, as past, present, and future. 

Our minds are very good at remembering past events and we’ve evolved to be good at imagining and planning future possibilities. Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano notes that:

With memory and cognition, our brains became time machines — we could travel back and forth in time. This mental time travel is a human capacity distinguishing us from other animals…[2]

We depend on these qualities of mind to live in the modern world; the modern world requires them of us. We have become very good at time travel, remembering, planning, analyzing things, labeling them, telling ourselves stories about the world.

But the cost is that in all this mental time travel, we set aside being fully aware of what is happening right now, in this moment, and this moment, and this one too.

In Annie Dillard’s acclaimed book “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, a memoir of her time in the woods, she describes practicing the art of stalking animals, trying to see these very shy creatures in their world. This art requires remaining stone still for minutes — or hours. It invites a different kind of seeing.

She describes the kind of seeing she brought into the woods, saying:

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it. … I have to say the words, describe what I’m seeing.[3]

But in learning to see what is shy and hidden, she finds another way to see, saying:

“… But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light with a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut.”[4]

Our experience is different when we learn to see without that camera, without that analysis, without the words to name and evaluate the things we see — or hear, or sense.

Buddhist teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, in his book Joyful Wisdom, describes something similar.

… In the first few moments of visiting some huge place like Yosemite National Park, or the Himalayas … the panorama is so vast, you don’t distinguish between “I” and “what I see”. There’s just seeing.[5]

Mingyur has done much work to connect Buddhist meditators with western science, to try to understand the underlying effect of mindfulness on the brain. As we know, there’s plenty of evidence now, that mindfulness, the practice of being in the present moment, benefits the brain, helps us manage emotions — think of the boy in the Plum Village story we heard earlier — helps us concentrate, even manage pain more effectively[6].

Mingyur speaks of the bigger picture, if you will, that becomes opened up through staying in the present moment. He says,

“Our thoughts, emotions, and sensations are like waves rising and falling in an endless ocean of infinite possibility. The problem is that we’ve become used to seeing only the waves and mistaking them for the ocean. Each time we look at the waves, though, we become a little more aware of the ocean; and as that happens, our focus begins to shift. We begin to identify with the ocean rather than the waves, watching them rise and fall without affecting the nature of the ocean itself.

But that can only happen if we begin to look.[7]

So, as we looked at the flowers earlier, really trying to see them, in the here, in the now, let’s strive to look at the ocean of the world, the realm of expansive, infinite possibility. We sanctify these flowers today by giving them our full attention, here and now. Let’s return to our flowers, and look again, finding, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, that if we peer deeply into our flower, we will see everything in the universe.

But that can only happen if we begin to look.

Notes:

1 http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/border-whores/ 

2 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132847-your-brain-is-a-time-machine-why-we-need-to-talk-about-time/

3 Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p. 36. 

4 ibid. p. 37. 

5 Yongey Mingyur, “Joyful Wisdom”, p. 118. 

6 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mindfulness-meditation-do-to-your-brain/ 

7 Mingyur, p. 119