It doesn’t take much to get me thinking about flowers, you know? Right now we are in that MOMENT of the peonies. Feel free to peruse my guy’s latest peony posts on Instagram. That is some NEWS. There’s always a lot of other news, but in my opinion, flowers are news too.

When he was done with his peony photo session one day, I snipped some extra flowers from the garden and gave the bouquet on hand a little extra flare.

I’ve been catching up on my favourite podcast, On Being, in short intervals. I was captivated by the episode on biomimicry with Janine Benyus where she responds to Krista Tippett:

Tippett: You have said, “The whole time we are evolving, beauty [has always been a] signal of the good,” too.

Benyus: Yes. That’s what’s really interesting. We are so close to what we used to be when we knew the embodied wisdom of living in place. We’re so close to that. I love learning about evolutionary psychology and biophilia and how men, too, but women particularly love flowers. And what they think now is because as we went foraging and gathering, we would look for flowers because in two weeks it would be food. It would be fruit.

Sparkling water. We love to put our houses near water. Sparkling water means there’s oxygen in it and it won’t make our babies sick. Beauty is the signal of the good. And you can take people now, modern people now and say, give them pictures of healthy forests and slightly diseased forests and they will know, “something’s wrong with that forest.” We, deep in ourselves, if we start listening to that cellular truth, which used to keep us alive, we will create beautiful things in beautiful ways. I do believe — and I’ve watched over all these years people’s reaction to biomimicry and it’s overwhelming. People are yearning. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, I used to do this.” Right? “I used to do this.”

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And so I think we just need to keep training ourselves to see beauty, and sharing that, and maybe somehow it translates down the line into something good. It can’t hurt to try, anyway, right?

I keep thinking about all the way we humans meet and how often we squander these meetings. Whether it’s inviting folks into a public space, at a dinner party, a coffee with friends, a presentation, a poetry reading. I mean, I have totally squandered these moments throughout my life. But how can I change that? If you have read the book The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker (mentioned on this blog before if you recall) you will have received many great tools to turn a gathering or a meeting into a beauty shock, really.

She talks about how we need to avoid having “housekeeping” details as our opening. She says instead, “your opening needs to be a kind of pleasant shock therapy.” She says, “It should grab people. And in grabbing them, it should both awe the guests and honour them. It must plant in them the paradoxical feeling of being totally welcomed and deeply grateful to be there.”

And then, and I love this, she talks about the giant vases of flowers at the Four Seasons. (In Edmonton, you might think about the Hotel MacDonald, or in Banff at the Banff Springs Hotel). She says these flowers are “honour-awing.” These flowers are “stunning and maybe taller than you, and that awes you, intimidates you, makes you remember that you don’t live like this back home. But of course the flowers are there for you, to honour you.”

I actually think having a giant painting of flowers in your home, or one by your door, can do the same thing. But you know that I am ENTIRELY BIASED WHEN I SAY THAT.

And you know what, I’m okay with that :)

What are other ways that we can honour and awe each other when we meet?

All I know is that I want to be part of that beauty shock therapy stuff. I want to honour-awe you. And then I want you to pass it on.

It’s something we can do.

June 23, 2023