christmas cactus

Years ago, someone gave me a Christmas cactus.  There were plenty of green leaves but not a bud in sight.  Christmas' came and went.  Nothing.  I saw other people's plants covered with hundreds of beautiful flowers.  Mine remained bare.  Every once in a while I would water it, or dust it.  I heard it needed cold, so it went to the garage for four months.  Nothing.  It spent some time in the kitchen, then moved to the bedroom.  I read these plants need continuous darkness for at least 12 hours a day  to induce bud formation. Several times I came thisclose to throwing it out.  But I have the least green thumb out there, and this plant was still alive.  


And then last December, buds miraculously appeared.  Fifteen or twenty of them, growing bigger and bigger, and then bursting open in ripe, pink lusciousness.  They made me smile every time I saw them.  They lit up my room.


But I couldn't help but wonder...why now?  Had there just been enough darkness and cold?  Would the blooms keep coming?


These same questions have been asked by me, and many others on a spiritual level.  Brian McLaren adressess them wonderfully in Naked Spirituality.


So again and again we are told in scripture, in dozens of different ways, that the hardships life throws at us are not intended by God to destroy us, but to strengthen us. ..  There are days, of course, when we wish there could be some other system.  We wish there could be a way of developing patience without delay, courage without danger, forgiveness without offense, generosity without need, skill without discipline, endurance without fatigue,  persistence without obstacles, strength without resistance, virtue without temptation and strong love without hard-to-love people.  But it turns out that there is no other way.  The Creator has created the right kind of universe to produce these beautiful qualities in us creatures.


For all its angst, there's beauty in the season of Perplexity.  There's the strength of ruthless honest, the courage of dogged endurance, the companionship of the disillusioned, the determination of the long-distance runner who won't give up even though exhausted.  In that act of not giving up, there is faith too, and hope, perhaps the most vibrant faith and hope of all. 


The blooms are back this year.  Filling my soul with color and promise, and faith and hope too.