This month welcomed the first signs of spring at Maryville Retreat Center in Holly, Michigan as the grounds and nature paths began to reveal the early wildflower blooms of the season. The beautiful thing about wildflowers is that they do not wait for perfect conditions. They simply bloom wherever the soil receives them. Many emerge along cracks between stones, along the edges of trails or in corners where most often forget to look.
There is something quietly radical about that.
In today’s world, it’s easier to notice and celebrate things that look polished and planned – the garden bed that has been tended and arranged or lives that appear perfect from the outside. But wildflowers are not garden flowers. They carry no guarantee of ideal conditions. They take root in rocky ground, in thin soil, in places that seemed inhospitable. And yet, they bloom – bringing beauty to all that encounter them.
I find myself wondering: what would it look like to live that way?
The Franciscan tradition has always held a deep reverence for the small and the overlooked. Saint Francis did not look past creation to find God. He looked through it. He understood that God’s presence is not reserved just for the grand and the magnificent, but is found in all of creation. God’s care for each of us is thoughtful and that sometimes all that is required is our presence.
Wildflowers ask nothing of us except to be noticed. And in noticing them, we practice something our hurried lives rarely allow — the art of paying attention, of slowing down long enough to see what has been quietly blooming all along.
This season, we invite you to walk the grounds of Maryville. Leave the noise behind for an hour. Take the trail along Lake Elliott. Let the wildflowers do what they have always done — bloom faithfully, without fanfare, in exactly the place they were given.
You might find that you needed that reminder more than you knew.
