Pray We Don't Have Grubs Inside of Us
Everybody Loves A Flower Child: Reclaiming Flowers as Catholics
Photo by Vasilios M on Unsplash
"Flower Child"
A comment on my friend's hair led to a reflection on how flowers have been tainted with sinful connotations since the 1960s.
A 60-something friend of mine wanted a witty response to a passive-aggressive comment. Someone made a point of telling her that her hair is very long, as if to imply that her hair is too long for her age.
I told her to say, “I’m a flower child.” It’d be a fun nod to her Marsha Brady generation.
Before I was Catholic, if I heard “flower child,” I thought of the hippies of the late sixties and early seventies.
Flowers mean something else now that I'm Catholic
Now that I am Catholic, I associate roses with Our Lady and flowers with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. The song Bright Blue Rose (associated by many with the Rosary), written by Irish singer-songwriter Jimmy MacCarthy and recorded by numerous artists, is one of my favorite songs. Pouring water into a vase of flowers reminds me of our dependence on the Holy Spirit.
As a Catholic, flowers remind me of the divine!
I cannot help but wonder…Was this specific, new association of flowers with hippies, a work of dark forces? No doubt the Sexual Revolution, and the brokenness with which it left us, was not of God.
In suggesting my friend nostalgically joke that she’s a “flower child,” was I playing into the Devil’s plan?
I use to associate flowers-in-the-hair with drug-fueled music festivals, but shouldn't the default association of flowers-as-adornment be May flower crownings and girls making their First Communion?
Doesn’t evil often lurk under the guise of things that seem benign or “just for fun”? ...Like being a “flower child.”
The REAL flower children (St. Thérèse, we’re looking—with so much gratitude—at you!) were not the wounded, quickly-fading flower children championing “free love”--they are the living Church Triumphant who never gave up on them.
And never give up on any of us.
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