The Love story about his Rose Buttonhole

Beloved Flower Lover,

“Thank you for the beautiful button hole”, he stood and smiled… “I pictured this”, he said standing there beaming with a shimmering smile that shone forever. “I saw all of this, me, my new wife, us, happy together through thick and thin. I saw the picture of what it feels like already happening. Thank you for my rose buttonhole”.

There was a silence, a poetic pause infused with our serving smiles, flashing brightly beautiful eternally.

He was talking to us about the gift of his personal transformation. He was light, he was funny, we were giggling. “I felt this even before today”, he said.

He said he had grown, changed and just played like whatever was going on outside, was less important to what was growing inside him. That he had decided that he was ready for commitment to wedded harmony. And that image of himself and his happy life was already there in the vision he described to himself. So he was peaceful. He kept on laughing. ..”and there is so much more”, he said.

What a generous gift to the world. We felt this light, fun couple were adding to the pre-existing harmony in the world. We felt a huge, juicy, tingle of the excitement about his life’s story, flutter into our hearts. Our skin flushed, switched on, as he generously let us into his intimate story of what changed him on the inside. It was his own ‘in joyment’.

“There is always more”,  he said quietly… ” crisis, survival, getting what we need, scared”. We felt his own personal compassion for himself as he saw his own story of himself flash before his eyes. Of himself breaking free from the not so comfortable zone of romantic, financial, vocational and blended family anxiety being described by himself to himself.

He kept us laughing as he was getting ready for the ceremony. He reminded us of the nature of exploring and expressing talents within us. Those talents that may not make the front of the World-Wide newspapers but by listening to their questions, to our inner connections we play ‘dress up’.  A practise that keeps those inner ‘links’ alive, as we give ourselves the permission to ‘in joy’ life. We discovered what it feels like to adopt a state of mind of mutual love. That which says we already are in the space of what life feels like to in-joy reciprocated happiness, peace and joy. As if it’s already there, in the way you want it to feel, to be!

Knowing so many people who carry relationships in their mind, Derek Walcott’s poem sprang to our mind. A poem that carries for us the experience of seeing ourselves as that who we most love. The one. The one we get excited to see when we come home. The one we forgive and make up with.  The one we realise we never had a problem with in the first place. The one we enjoy being in harmony with, the one,the one the one.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Agape’s Michael Bernard Beckwith, often talks about what Derek Walcott’s poem describes. The power, influence and impact of  in-joying loving yourself, again.

Enjoying the fact that when you love someone else, you are really loving that part in yourself. When you get excited to see someone, it’s that part in yourself you are also embracing. Mirror, as your beauty reflected back.

That that picture, that vision of who you want, that inner feeling, no matter what you see going on, on the outside external world, comes from you first. So it’s an important key to ‘in joyment’ of a happy beautiful marriage with it’s ups and downs.

Bernard Beckwith often talks about how if the external image of your life ‘does’ line up exactly with what you imagine, great. Accept it,  ‘in-joy’ it, indulge it. Whilst continuing to place your highest in-joyment of the pleasure of you creating your good feelings first from your own insides. Your imagination, your body, your state of mind.  Making that your place of your most pleasured, peaceful , focus, first.

And if the external situation ‘is not going’, along with the internal image you describe to yourself, accept it too. Do not fight it, do not say you hate it, do not resist it. No.  Instead possibly imagine it as a gift in what Dr. Darren Weissman calls, ‘strange wrapping paper’. Decide to be curious about what else could unfold.

We kept on hearing Beckwith’s voice in our heads, repeatingly saying,”nothing needs to change in life, for me to decide to be happy”. “I do not need someone or something to change for me to decide to be happy first.” “I am more than my external circumstance.”

He was not looking for the outside world to change to make himself happy first.

Our groom, was not denying situations, the finance, the health, the exams, the relationship stuff . He was not railing up against it. Yet with deep sincerity he was just not accepting that external situations were his full destiny. That those external situations were just temporary. Our groom was at peace with where he was. He had an infinite vision of love that brought his ‘life parts’ together. Standing boldly erect. Erected, to express his lovely creativity inside himself. He was ready to express it, deliver it, share it.To enjoy the harmony in his heart.

We felt like we were in front of an amazing scientist, whose class stretched us. Which we attended because we were open to his passion. Different to us, but totally the same to us at the same time. And today, because of our devotion to him, we appreciated a once misunderstood  formulae in a language we were both receptive too. Flowery, passionate, indulgent! We glowed!

Our joy for flowers, their unique way for expressing celebration painted by this expression of love had led us to understanding . We give thanks for their eternal beauty. Their life-force, expressed in the mathematical, scientific expression of life. Infinity.

Hushed by the gravitas of all of this, we gently paid deeper appreciation for when things appear to fall apart.

Possibly even imagine it’s like you just having a temporary car break down on the road. It happened but you will be home at some point. So just be peaceful. Then when relaxed and calm, decide to go back to indulge the gorgeous image you use to describe, infinite, happiness, joy, and delight to yourself.

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We extend our Congratulations to Mr. Ian Beardworth who married Ms. Ann Marie Rose on Friday 14th September.

The Team,

The London Flower Lover