Consider the Flower

What a Trillium teaches us about life on Earth Day 2025

There is much about my new life here in the mountains that requires a re-orientation to life. So much has happened in me and around me that is re-orienting me to a new, different and wonderful season of life. Everything seems new to me here and now. It truly is a remarkable season in my life.

Theologians and writers have described a movement to our spiritual lives by using these three terms:

Orientation

Dis-Orientation

Re-Orientation

These are more than words—these are three movements that succinctly describe our lives over the stages, phases and seasons that we all pass through in our life. These three terms (and there are others) offer us a way of understanding our own life and the life of others around us.

Our orientation is our initial education and understanding of life. These are our formative years where our minds, hearts and souls are formed. We learn and we orient ourselves in education, learning and acquiring skills. We learn about love. We try on vocation as if our jobs are like clothes to keep trying on till something sort of fits. We adjust ourselves to how life works; how faith works; how people work. There’s much to learn. We think we have it figured out.

But all of us, if we are aware, go through stages of dis-orientation. That’s when a bump in the road throws us off balance—perhaps even off course. Something happens—a divorce; getting fired; a tragedy; a heart break; a deep grief and we feel very ‘dis’-oriented… sort of dizzy as if we got hit and knocked down to our senses. We learn that life is not fair. That bad things happen to good people. We have to reframe our initial way we thought life worked; how faith worked; how people actually are in this world. We learn how strong we are; how failure is not the end; how a broken heart becomes a stronger heart and we experience healing from brokenness. Here, after brokenness, we move into a beautiful stage of life where we are “re-oriented.”

We re-orient our lives, our loves and our work to discover a deep satisfaction. I like the term, “convergence.” Things in life finally begin to converge—our passion, education, experience and opportunity all come together to usher us into a life that is truly re-oriented—a life where we see things differently; our faith has has been through the furnace of testing and a fire to burn out and away what is not true and not needed. We deepen. We hopefully mature.

You might find it interesting to take these three terms and use them as markers and dividers of your own life. See where you are; understand where you’ve been. Know where you’re headed in the next season of your own life and faith.

Here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, a spring wildflower blooms on the forest floor called, the “Trillium.” Here’s what a little research told me about the Trillium:

Trilliums are a genus of spring wildflowers belonging to the lily family, known for their distinctive three-petaled flowers and three-leafed structure. They are native to temperate regions of North America and Asia, with a high concentration of species found in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Trilliums are often found in rich, moist habitats, and some are even considered to have some medicinal properties.

I first became aware of the trillium in my “re-orientation” stage when I moved here and became neighbors with the friends in the National Forest near my home. I went there to unwind; to find peace in the beauty and be captivated with all the signs of life I found. Two years ago, I took a “Wildflower Hike” and learned the names and manners of some of the wildflowers. The Trillium captured my heart because of it’s simplicity and the tri-blossomed flower, that to me has white trumpets emanating from the center of the blossom. Take a look at my photo here and you’ll see what I mean.

Yesterday, I went on a hike with my eleven year old granddaughter, Lydia. She spotted the Trillium first and called me over to notice it. We were both excited as if we had found a treasure in the middle of the forest. We almost passed this amazing flower by due to it’s small size and almost hiding among the carpeted leaves and twigs. The trillium we discovered was purple—which is linked to the story of the woman in Asia Minor who helped the Apostle Paul in his endeavors with the early church. That Lydia was a merchant woman who sold purple fabric. How fitting—that among all the life on the forest floor, my granddaughter, Lydia and I enjoyed this lone purple Trillium offered us a rich moment and my granddaughter took this image herself. I think it’s a memory that will be etched in both of our souls forever. At the end of the day yesterday, she gave me an unusually big hug—as if she was telling me, without words, how special this day had been together.

Beauty has it’s own way of reorienting us to what matters and what is important. Perhaps, this is precisely why Jesus himself, taught us to “consider the lily.” When we stop; when we notice; when we actually take a deeper look, we might find ourselves moving on and through one phase of life to the next.

On this Earth Day 2025, I hope my poem, “Oh Trillium” might offer you an invitation to take your shoes off and walk barefooted upon the earth—our home and to stop; notice and observe all the gifts of wisdom we are offered by this magnificent teacher.

I really do believe that nature helps us in our heart education; our spiritual re-orientation and mental grounding with our bodies. We need nature more than one day a year to re-orient us to what is important and what is true.

In my poem, you’ll notice the conversation between the Trillium and the Pilgrim—which just might be someone who is in that stage of dis-orientation because of the heaviness of the world or something happening inside their own heart.

The Trillium offers us a much needed message if we can receive it.