Porthole

We are the flowers of one garden

Each flower blooms with a purpose to greet the day or night to give or receive and then pass. Some produce seeds like the stars of the universe, some none. Some seeds find a cranny to call home. Some lives are short. But somewhere there is a plant struggling to produce a flower... perhaps only one. Somewhere there is a flower blooming.

And that flower is you...

and everyone.

For some having children is their gift to the world. For others it's their voice raised in song. For those who choose it's their deeds that nourish the garden, that water the seeds that bring forth flowers. For me it's written with love.

So consider Plato who founded the Academy that survived for 300 years, wrote tomes that have been read for over 2400 years. We even study his famous student Aristotle. He had no children, only the philosophers of the last twenty centuries. Perhaps that is enough.

For even if you do not have offspring, for even if what you give to the world does not endure, it is your gift...

and your gift is enough.

So this is how I would start a TED talk on "We are the flowers of one garden." I would have to expand and give more examples. I have traveled the world and met incredible human beings everywhere, for even the most humble among us is precious.

The title of my talk would be based on this and other quotes from the Bahá'í Scriptures on unity. A reference work:
https://bahai-library.com/shigeta_waves_one_sea

On a related note, I am lead to tears whenever I heard Holst's Jupiter from his "Suite of the Planets':



The lyrical section can be sung as a hymn to the poem from Sir Cecil Spring Rice:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

You may have heard it at Princess Diana's funeral.

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