Bloom

An expression that often runs through my mind is "bloom where you are planted." I think about that for myself, my family, and for my neighbors and parishioners. How can we help one another bloom where we are planted? What does that look like?

The picture at the top is from an exhibition entitled "Bloom" by the artist Anna Schuleit. This exhibition is set in the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. She took this abandoned Mental Hospital and set up 28,000 flowers throughout the place. She said that she did it because mental patients never get flowers (while regular hospital patients often do). After the four days of the exhibition she took these flowers (one halfway is depicted in the photograph at the top) and had them sent to mental patients around the Boston area. How beautiful.

Back in 2001 she took the old Northampton Mental Hospital (abandoned as well) and put speakers in many of the rooms and for 28 minutes one day she played Bach's "Magnificat" throughout the grounds (through the broken windows) as people gathered. In the interview I got the idea that the people at the event were former mental patients, their families, people who had worked there, and people from the community. It was a way to say goodbye officially. And -- how beautiful that the "Magnificat" was sung -- this reminder that God has turned the world upside down from the way we understand it.

I take a lot of inspiration from this woman and I find myself being inspired by her witness to see the world around me with new eyes. Bloom. Yes, indeed.