The beautiful flowers of darkness

Since the ground caved in on October 7, I have found an unexpected sense of comfort in my garden’s predictability and regularity. To everything, as King Solomon has taught us, there is a season. The bees buzz, ferrying the pollen around; the purple bushes flourish; and the butterflies appear. The tulips slowly open in the sunlight, and they close reliably as the day wanes. The same thing will happen tomorrow. Maybe there’s room for hope.

Then, last week, I witnessed an incredible phenomenon that both confirmed and challenged this predictability in a way that felt close to miraculous. A new plant in my garden, the night-blooming Cereus, was about to blossom. My horticulturist friend pointed to a swollen area on the plant, predicting that it would bloom that very night, and would wilt by morning.

Sure enough, as night fell, the most magnificent large white flower appeared, wafting forth a heavenly perfume. By morning, the flower was gone, leaving a drooping stem in its place of glory. 

Despite my having been prepared for this phenomenon, everything about it felt astounding and unexpected. The Cereus didn’t grow like other plants, and it didn’t wilt like other plants. It emerged fully bloomed, did all of its work in one dark night, and then went completely limp with first light. 

I did not know how to make room for this fascinating event in my predictability paradigm, and I could not get it out of my mind. I had never seen such a beautiful and intricate flower, and did not know what to make of its short but intense life, its flourishing in darkness, or its quick transition from ultimate vitality to abject decline. Much as I was grateful for the rarity of what I had witnessed, I was simultaneously overwhelmed by a deep and jarring sense of loss. 

All of this brought me with a jolt to thoughts of Yosef and Ben, our two great-nephews whom we lost this year in the Swords of Iron war. I thought of their stunning acts of courage and honor, of their incredibly short but incredibly meaningful lives, of their blazing acts of bravery in our nation’s darkest moment. But I also felt the grim reality of their deaths, which have left us bereft and desolate.

It seems that the miraculous and the painful have to live together in some kind of cosmic synergy that we will never really be able to understand. So I’m grateful for the Cereus plant, and for the lesson it has taught me about how life asks us to reconcile  these unexpected and conflicting realities. I want to think of Ben and Yosef as the beautiful flowers of darkness, whose work in the world was done quickly and fully as part of a mysterious unfolding that we can only try our best to comprehend. Perhaps this night-blooming marvel can help us find a way to hold our conflicting sensibilities in a spirit of faith, comfort and hope.