This lovely native North American plant, with its nodding flower on the end of slender stalk, has the botanical name: Erythronium americanum. Its various common names are: Trout Lily, Dogtooth Violent, Fawn Lily.
Trout Lily is expert at hiding. Its mottled leaves resemble a brook trout in a dappled stream or spring fawn in grass. It does not bloom for the first 4 to 7 years of its existence. In late afternoon, it assumes this heads-down position, while in the morning, growing under deciduous tress before they leaf out in early spring, the petals curve backwards, revealing a lemon yellow interior and anthers on thread like stamens.
Trout Lily seems to know where it belongs and is rarely takes to being being dug up and transplanted from its wooded hideaway to someone's home garden. Even in a large colony of say one hundred plants, only one will carry two leaves and a single flower, the ninety-nine remain camouflaged with one one green-brown spotted leaf.
"Guard me as the apple of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings..." Psalm 17:8
"You are my hiding place, O Lord; you save me from distress." Psalm 32:7
"You are my hiding place, my shield; I hope in your word." Psalm 119:114
And of course, the Christian speaks of the "Hidden Years" of Jesus - after a few gospel reports from his Infancy, we hear nothing again of him until his adult appearance along the Sea of Galilee.
Christianity speaks so often of "tireless work" that we neglect the soul work that might take place in silence, solitude and hiddenness. Maybe this is a Trout Lily's spring time for us: Stop running away from hidden-ness. Stop apologizing for hiddenness. Stop thinking hiddenness isn't Christian.
Someone recently sent a very short essay written by the English Poet, David Whyte, titled: Hiding.
St. Edith Stein's collected works is titled: The Hidden Life. And there is a book titled: Halfway to Heaven - the Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians. We can stop thinking "hiddenness" is un-Christian.
"Guard me as the apple of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings..." Psalm 17:8
"You are my hiding place, O Lord; you save me from distress." Psalm 32:7
"You are my hiding place, my shield; I hope in your word." Psalm 119:114
And of course, the Christian speaks of the "Hidden Years" of Jesus - after a few gospel reports from his Infancy, we hear nothing again of him until his adult appearance along the Sea of Galilee.
Christianity speaks so often of "tireless work" that we neglect the soul work that might take place in silence, solitude and hiddenness. Maybe this is a Trout Lily's spring time for us: Stop running away from hidden-ness. Stop apologizing for hiddenness. Stop thinking hiddenness isn't Christian.
Someone recently sent a very short essay written by the English Poet, David Whyte, titled: Hiding.
Hiding is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practises of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snowbound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother's womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
I've read these paragraphs many times in order to understand. And I'm thinking of the recent dust-up surrounding Facebook selling peoples' names and other information. And our asking, "What does privacy mean anymore?" Or of advertising that pops up on my computer screen - something out in cyber space "thinking" it knows me: who I am, what my interests are, what I need to own, what I need to read. It all makes me want to run to the hiddenness of my garden. We can stop defending or apologizing for our hiddenness.
St. Edith Stein's collected works is titled: The Hidden Life. And there is a book titled: Halfway to Heaven - the Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians. We can stop thinking "hiddenness" is un-Christian.
