“Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.”
— St. John of the Cross
Maybe something is trying to make contact.
Maybe Christ.
Maybe the Mother of Sorrows.
Maybe some small mercy from the other side of the locked door.
I do not know yet.
I am careful with that sentence because I do not want to rush into certainty. Certainty has hurt me before. Certainty can become a drug. Certainty can become another costume religion wears when it does not want to sit in mystery.
But I have had this vision.
Flowers opening.
Lilies and roses.
Not one flower.
Not a polite little bouquet.
A surrounding.
An unfolding.
White lilies opening like quiet trumpets. Roses opening slowly, petal by petal, like wounds learning not to clench. The whole vision feels alive, soft, fragrant, holy, and strange. It does not feel like an answer exactly. It feels like an invitation.
Lilies and roses.
Purity and sorrow.
Death and rebirth.
The Mother and the tomb.
The bridal chamber and the graveyard.
The flower at the altar and the flower laid on a coffin.
I keep thinking the meaning has something to do with receptivity.
The heart opening.
The soul opening.
Not forcing.
Not breaking down the door with a crowbar.
Opening.
There is a difference.
For so long, I have been braced. My heart folded in on itself for protection. My soul starving, but suspicious of bread. My mind racing around the locked chapel trying every theological key it could remember.
But flowers do not open by argument.
They open because something reaches them.
Light.
Warmth.
Season.
Rain.
The hidden command inside creation that says:
Now.
Open.
And maybe that is what this is.
Not the end of the dark night.
Not the door opening.
Not the Eucharistic boat reaching shore.
Not the full Light of Christ pouring back through the rooms of my soul.
Not yet.
But perhaps the first softening.
Perhaps the first sign that the frozen ground is not dead.
Perhaps the first hint of what St. Hildegard called greenness — that living force of God moving through creation, flowers, water, breath, and the hidden places where life returns before we know how to name it.
The flowers open around me.
But I am still standing at the door.
That part matters.
The door is still locked.
I am still trying to figure out what opens it.
I am still back on my heels, still uncertain, still bruised, still not ready to pretend everything has been healed because something beautiful appeared in the dark.
I have learned not to confuse a sign with arrival.
A flower is not the same as a door.
A vision is not the same as home.
A scent of roses is not the same as the altar opening.
But it is not nothing.
And I need to stop dismissing what is not nothing just because it is not everything.
Maybe that is part of the lesson.
Maybe in the dark night, the soul has to relearn scale.
A spark is not the fire, but it is not nothing.
Smoke is not flame, but it is not nothing.
A flower is not the garden, but it is not nothing.
A whisper is not the full voice, but it is not nothing.
A locked door surrounded by lilies and roses is still a locked door.
But it is no longer only a locked door.
Something is blooming there.
Something is happening at the threshold.
And maybe thresholds matter more than I thought.
The door has been my enemy for a while now.
The door meant silence.
The door meant exclusion.
The door meant unanswered prayer.
The door meant God somewhere inside and me outside with my forehead pressed to the wood.
But what if the door is also a place of becoming?
What if the soul is not only waiting for the door to open?
What if the soul is being changed while waiting?
What if the key is not a piece of information?
What if the key is receptivity?
That frightens me.
Because receptivity means I cannot control the arrival.
I cannot pry open grace.
I cannot schedule resurrection.
I cannot demand that God return in the exact form I knew before.
I can only open.
Petal by petal.
Wound by wound.
Prayer by prayer.
Even the death and rebirth part feels clearer now.
This is not simply the death of faith.
It may be the death of a former self.
The self that thought calling would become a road quickly.
The self that thought priesthood would make sense after ordination.
The self that thought God’s warmth would always be accessible in the same way.
The self that believed prayer would keep working by familiar machinery.
The self that thought if I loved God enough, the door would not lock.
That self is dying.
I do not say that dramatically.
I say it with grief.
Because I loved parts of that self.
He was hopeful.
He was eager.
He wanted to save the world.
He believed the flame would find a hearth.
He was wrong about some things, maybe, but he was not foolish for hoping.
So if this is rebirth, it is not cheerful.
It is not a motivational poster.
It is death first.
It is the seed underground before the stem.
It is Christ in the tomb before Mary hears her name in the garden.
It is Holy Saturday before Easter morning.
It is a lily opening beside a stone that has not yet moved.
Maybe that is why the flowers matter.
Flowers know how to live near death.
They grow in graveyards.
They stand near altars.
They bloom at funerals.
They open beside tombs.
They do not deny death.
They answer it with fragrance.
Maybe the Mother of Sorrows is near in that.
She knows the flower and the sword.
She knows the womb and the tomb.
She knows how love can stand beside death and not understand what God is doing.
Maybe she is not opening the door for me yet.
Maybe she is standing near it, quiet as a rose, teaching my soul how to unclench.
And maybe Christ is there too.
Not loud.
Not obvious.
Not yet the voice I am begging for.
But perhaps hidden in the unfolding itself.
Because resurrection does not begin with fanfare.
It begins in the dark.
In the sealed place.
In the body no one thinks is moving.
In the silence before the stone is rolled away.
Julian of Norwich wrote, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
I am not ready to say that without trembling.
But maybe the flowers are saying it for me.
Not as cheap comfort.
Not as denial.
As prophecy.
As a promise spoken in petals because words would be too much right now.
All shall be well.
Not yet.
Not easily.
Not without death.
Not without grief.
Not without the old self passing through fire and soil and silence.
But well.
Somehow.
Somewhere.
In God.
I do not know what opens the door.
I am still standing there.
Still confused.
Still back on my heels.
Still wounded enough to distrust sudden beauty.
But I have something to grab onto now.
Lilies.
Roses.
A threshold.
A sense that the heart and soul may be learning receptivity again.
A possibility that the locked door is not the only thing in the vision.
That matters.
For a long time, all I could see was the door.
Now I see what is blooming around it.
Maybe that is contact.
Maybe that is mercy.
Maybe that is the Mother’s quiet hand.
Maybe that is Christ not yet speaking, but preparing the soul to hear.
I do not know.
But I am not empty-handed tonight.
I am still outside the door.
But there are flowers at my feet.
And for the first time in a while, I can believe that something living may be trying to reach me.