Awaiting the Jacarandas
I was appalled to arrive in Los Angeles a decade ago just as May went grey and June turned to gloom. Then I discovered the jacarandas and learned there is more to a beautiful day than sunshine. The next year, the purple flowers that so perfectly offset our annually dimming skies became a beacon of hope as I fought off homelessness during a cataclysmic divorce. When I was thriving again, I prayed at the bedside of a dying hospice patient for the jacarandas to blossom so he could see them one last time. And this year, with sore lungs and a heart heavy from the loss of my former homes and communities burned to the ground by the wildfires, I await the jacarandas for entirely new reasons.
When I wound down my career as a consumer brand PR strategist, I began picking up pebbles from a mountain of wisdom through a lineage of Peruvian healers. These experiences have taught me that the indigenous forebears to the lands we now seek to heal knew much more about the power of nature than our culture remembers. Now, I'm the dad in the school pickup line happy to kick up a conversation about singing and praying to flowers, the grass and even your cannabis. From this knowledge comes what feels like vital awareness for supporting Los Angeles through our new reality of recovery.
“When we pay attention to nature, offer her our gratitude and tender care, it becomes easier to envision the magnificence that will invariably sprout from these soils fortified with ash and tears.”
Nature enacts a magnificent cycle of self-healing mechanics without any need for our involvement. The trees breathe to clean our air and a mycelial network of mushrooms purifies the soil. And we can also call upon these natural wonders to support our own grief and recovery. Native wisdom keepers know that leaves carry prayers and that bird spirits can cleanse the sadness in our hearts. Meditating upon crashing waves reminds us of times we've been knocked down and gotten back up before. But like a mother toiling for her children regardless of their appreciation, Mother Nature can do so much more for us when offered gratitude and reciprocity. If we want to receive the full potential of nature's healing power, we have to be aware of it, offer it our thanks and do our part to help nourish it along the way.
Those of us who have witnessed miracles in the natural world do not require scientific proof for validation. We've prayed with plant spirits and seen atheists discover God and holy people awaken to the divinity of atheists. We commonly observe traumas sloughing away like dead skin, bringing people into new lives through the healing light of plants. We bow our heads in awe-struck gratitude when rains pour in response to our songs and winds gust to confirm the utterance of profound wisdom. So now, as Los Angelenos await the arrival of this year's jacarandas, I call upon them to do more for us than shower purple petals and create sticky messes on our cars and sidewalks.
There is a natural process unfolding around us right now and we each have a part to play in it. When we pay attention to nature, offer her our gratitude and tender care, it becomes easier to envision the magnificence that will invariably sprout from these soils fortified with ash and tears. I invite you to take a moment to thank the trees. Marvel at a blossom and consider the role it is playing for you right now. Offer songs of gratitude to the birds and winds. I will be looking to the bare jacarandas in awe. As I anticipate her blooms, I call upon all plant and animal spirits to carry a prayer that when we see them again, the worst will be behind us, and our best days will be right ahead.