Easter, Flowers
Today I end my project for Lent. Everyday I’ve read a passage from John during this period and picked a card alongside the text.
I started the project by pulling a card that helped me imagine how this project would be for me. I received the Knight of Candlesticks (Knight of Wands) from the Tarot of Jane Austen as an answer to that question (made by
chelsearoad).
The Knight of Candlesticks is represented by Henry Tilney, a character from Northanger Abbey. Henry Tilney is a clergyman. This indicated that I would come into contact with the divine in some or other way. It is a lovestory; here he is with the girl he will marry at the end of the book. Henry Tilney is honest, integer and idealistic and light-hearted. This last characteristic stood out for me regarding to this project. I wrote down that I smelled the scent of roses, all sweetness and love, when I thought of Henry Tilney.
Looking back it has not been as light-hearted as I hoped it would be, but “the scent of roses, all sweetness and love” has been a theme. Love, sharing and the need or the will to engage myself with Christ and his life were there often (with all the resistance and hesitation that goes along with that). The roses symbolise this, with their beauty and their thorns.
The last card that I have pulled in this project was the Ten of Cups from the Voyager Tarot, full of orange and red flowers, called “Passion”. That was how the project felt towards the end, gripping, passionate.
One other time flowers were important for me during this Lent. In Holland children make a procession through the church on Palm Sunday with crosses decorated with eggs and colourful paper, as if they accompany Jesus on his entry in Jerusalem. These look like flowering crosses.
It never fails to move me seeing the children walking with their crosses. Until this year I always got melancholic by this: now we cheer, but so much suffering and pain will come. But this year, seeing the children with their crosses I thought: “Oh, these crosses show us how the suffering will end: with an empty tomb, with life.” Seeing these flowering crosses helps us to endure suffering and to endure the engagement with the suffering of Christ, because they have shown us that it will end with life.
For me Lent and the Holy Week ended with my dream about the mental institution, during the night from friday till saturday. It felt as if Christ invited me to leave the institution, to free myself. (I saw my notes of that dream again today, I was meant to stay there until october!)