This was the first drawing that I made in ink which is always a little nerve-wrecking because your hand must be steady and the quality of the lines drawn need to be a bit more certain than when you are working with pencil. The drawing was made from a photograph I took of flowers at the bat mitzvah of a friend’s daughter. It was the first bat mitzvah that I ever attended and I was in awe of the ceremony and the preparations made by this beautiful young girl, her family and the community that supports her. And separately in that same week, another friend found out she got tenure - which felt like another really big thing to celebrate. So this drawing was made with a capital ‘C” celebration in mind. Big thanks for such big, epic events.
And looking back, it’s interesting to see what flowers were in the bouquet. Many of them are flowers that appear in some of the other gratitude blooming cards…like the rose (which covers our themes of choice, vulnerability, grace), a gardenia (our theme of gentleness), an iris (our theme of impermanence), and the delphinium (infinite possibility). And there are other flowers in the drawing that aren’t in our cards but perhaps appear to inspire you to take a look at them and see what messages appear for you when you take the time to really look: And those flowers are the tulip, the gladiolus, and the calla lily…
Have you noticed that at times like those, those big celebrations, how large and flowing gratitude can feel? I think that sometimes, we can almost relive the feeling of gratitude in our bodies and in our bones by remembering those moments. So when this card appears, I always think of it as a reminder that we can recall that big feeling of gratitude whenever we really need it.
- December 12, 2020
