Last night’s rain continued this morning, and it’s predicted to rain all day. However there was a brief clearing after dawn, gifting me a comfortable chance to venture outside and discover what would be today’s rendezvous. Today it turned out to be a patch of seemingly carefree columbines — purple, pink, and orange/yellow — growing in rich, moist soil on a corner bounded by street on one side and sidewalk the other.
The purple (blue) columbine in the foreground, Aquilegia vulgaris, is a species native to Europe; and the orange and yellow columbine in the background is our Eastern U.S. wild columbine, Aquilegia canadensis. My guess is the pink columbine growing between the two may one of many hybrid varieties available today. Peoples from Ancient Greece and Europe, as well as native tribes in the New World used columbine seeds as an aphrodisiac. And English herbalist, Nicholas Culpeper in the mid seventeenth century recommended the seeds taken in wine to speed the process of childbirth.
What I find remarkable in today’s image is multiplicity. Multiplicity of color — each columbine species in my neighbor’s flowerbed possessing its own unique color, but the three species growing together as one. Multiplicity of variety worldwide — with native species from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. And multiplicity of peoples from different continents independently arriving at the same medicinal observation — a magical, invigorating power that can be realized after consuming seeds of the columbine.
Meister Eckhart writes that no multiplicity can disturb the Divine. This morning that reckless, divine multiplicity was abundantly, spectacularly, and at a deeper level, lovingly, clear.
