Smelling the invisible rose.

It seems we are drawing towards a new stage in our national lesson in patience.   Collectively we have had to learn to wait for and forgo much of what used to be easily accessible and even part of our routines.   One of our regular events was a long walk or climb somewhere in the countryside within an hour or two from our home.  This year though spring has come and gone, the wild flowers and blooms of the higher hills, the spring lambs jumping in the fields, the wonderful mountain sunsets have all gone unobserved.   Invisible to us, limited to our cities and towns.  The recent news of relaxing the travel limits has set us planning apace where we are going to go and what we hope to see.


Of course, beauty in nature is just as beautiful whether we are there to notice it or not.  Perhaps nature has enjoyed her greater privacy this year, the quietness and calm settling over the landscape as the patient seasons run their course.   


Such patience runs deep in a well lived life and is one of the more precious qualities of love.   In our church grounds there is a small garden, carefully tended, where one of our church members used to come Sunday by Sunday just after 9.30am to spend a few moments in quietness. This is a memorial garden where the ashes of her husband are buried and over them she planted a rose which has grown tall and elegant.  She has not been since mid-March and the rose has been in bud, started to open, then in full blossom and only now starting to fade.  She has missed the whole season of the rose this year and I wonder if she thinks about it, imagining it blooming, invisible to her eye, imagining its’ scent….the invisible rose.   I walk past it though, most days going to church, and have taken time to drink deeply of its’ rich scent, to look closely at the complex unfolding of its’ velveteen petals.   The patience of the love that planted the rose and watched it slowly grow over the years continues to sustain my friend in this waiting time.


And for those beginning their journey of marriage there have been trials and uncertainties too. My niece is delighted that her planned wedding for August 1^st can now go ahead with up to 30 guests.  Just last week I’d had a chat with her dad, at that point gloomy and uncertain if they could have even 10 people.   Our wonderful Curate Harriet can finally have her wedding in early July, postponed from late April.  


 Love, whether for a widow looking back on a rich married life of many decades, unable to visit her thin place each week, or young couples starting out, having to scale back and then scale back again their expectations, comes with its own rich joys and pains.  For both though patience brings its’ own subtle light and strength, and love becomes ever more deepened and multi-hued.

1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.