Never Too Old for Pink Roses

By Sibley Fleming

I was admiring the stand of long-stemmed pink roses on the altar this morning. At my age, I should be ashamed of being so fond of pink roses and I felt this acutely as I drank in the perfect pink buds against the white wall, sitting on the shelf behind and to the right of the lectern. The passion for pink roses is of course understandable in a little girl – even a tomboy will succumb to the enchantment of a tea set – there’s just something about a miniature white china pot and shot glass-size tea cups with dainty pink rose buds melted into the surface.

When I was 12, I learned to embroider on pink roses, which were printed on white linen dresser runners. I stitched like crazy and invented a Pink Rose Tea Club, a ruse that I used in order to be able to make fudge. “Have a club meeting this weekend. I probably need to make some fudge to offer my guests.” Though guests were seldom actually plural. Four years later, I was thrilled to receive a pink rose bush on my 16th birthday, it had small blossoms like baby’s breath and I have no idea what variety it was.

But I ramble. The point is that when you’re 45, you should be graduated to more mature tastes in rose colors, like deep velvet red or King’s Ransom yellow. I’m sorry to say these thoughts kept creeping through my mind as I listened to Patricia talking about the host being substantial, something to eat and chew and digest in a very human way—the sermon. She was making the important point about the connection of the spiritual life to the physical life. Sort of like the physical pink roses being on the altar to see with your eyes, but the absolute pleasure and gratitude that you feel by seeing a thing that fills the senses with joy being maybe something more spiritual.

And of course, the Eucharist was so like that this morning as the eight or so of us gathered at the altar for communion—the bread was thick and dense so that it required we chew hard, chomp down and intensely experience the flesh.

There was a cool nip in the morning air and it seemed we all rose from our pews, sort of just happy to be there, ready for the fall to kick in. As I gathered my things chatting with Nancy Dillon about the newly ended summer, I glanced over to see Dottie Albright walking toward us, a single pink rose stem in each hand. Everyone received the gift of a long-stemmed, beautifully formed pink rose. Now I am home and my rose is sitting here on my desk, in water, in an old clear glass bottle. And I chuckle a bit at a quote I heard a little while ago on NPR—Only God can make a tree because the bark is so hard to put on—perhaps that’s a reference to the physical.