Bird of Paradise. Happy Sunday!

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

Every year, when I attend the San Diego Birding Festival in February, I photograph the abundant Bird of Paradise plants in flower. They are used as ornamentals around homes, businesses, and hotels. They come in all sizes and colors, from tree like plants with black and white flowers, to the more common shrub like purple and orange flowered plants most often associated with the name. The plant is native to South Africa, where it is called “Crane Flower”, but it has be exported all over the globe, to grow outside in moderate climes, and inside everywhere. San Diego seems to be the ideal climate for it (outside South Africa of course). I love the ornate, somewhat argessive shapes and contrasting colors...the gaudy, flamboyant audacity of it all. It seems to shout, “Love me or hate me, but I can not be ignored!” 

I would like to think there are days when I resemble the Bird of Paradise flower...when the light that is in me, outrageous, flamboyant, and audacious, burns so bright I am a living challenge to ignore. I know I have met a few people like that...so good, so sure, so over-the-top confident of their light that they just shine on, and leave the world to make what it will of it. Walking, talking human Bird of Paradise flowers. And I suspect, that were my eye as generous as I could hope, I would see more of them...for I suspect that there is a Bird of Paradise flower person inside us all...all who live by the light of the loving creator God, as the children of God. A person just a vivid and unapologetic as these flowers. 

I only get to see and photograph the Bird of Paradise flowers of San Diego once a year. But it is my prayer that my generous eyes would be opened wider, so that I can see the Bird of Paradise burning in each person I meet this Sunday, and every day this year. Happy Sunday.