Peace Conveyed Through Flowers | March 22, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Karen Melander Magoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDxSxqvLFjR68&v=xSxqvLFjR68

Not long ago I visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco

I made peonies out of colored paper

Pink colored paper

Such a gentle thing to do

In a world full of aggression and war

Divisiveness and chaos

I cut pink paper

To make pink flowers

Peonies

To set under an oil painting I have at home

A Chinese painting

Of peonies

And then to give to my grandsons

Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote:

In the garden of my heart the flowers of peace

Bloom beautifully

There is a rather lovely story of the Peace Rose which serendipitously marked the end of WWII and the beginning of the United Nations. It was a French horticulturist, Francis Meillard, who cultivated the delicate, creamy rose, etched in pink. It was 1935 and war was threatening. Francis sent cuttings of his flower to friends everywhere, afraid his creation might get lost in a war. One shipment made it to the United States. On April 29, 1945, the rose was named the Peace Rose in hopes of peace for the world. That same day Berlin fell and the conference to establish the United Nations began in San Francisco. Each delegate receiving a Peace Rose, an expression of the hope that beauty and peace could survive in a shattered world.

Our world is shattered again today as bombs destroy children and their families, leaders of nations, imperfect yet allowing greater stability than war can ever bring.

We ask for gardens rather than bombs, for love rather than hate. Perhaps we need a Flower Power movement as we had against the Vietnam War in the 1960’s and 70’s, or the 1974 Portuguese “Carnation Revolution”, when a dictatorship was overthrown and no one was injured, no shots fired. A new constitution was enacted and colonialism in Africa condemned. The military in Portugal were responsible for the bloodless revolution. I heard the story of a young boy who proudly stood between his father and another soldier with carnations in the barrels of their rifles.

The coup took place on a single day, April 25, 1974, when Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship was overthrown by lower ranking army officers who refused to fire when ordered by officers loyal to the dictatorship. The citizens adorned the troops with red and white carnations. With the overthrow of the regime of Marcello Caetano, came also the end of colonial wars in Africa and freedom for the former colonies Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau. Four people were killed by Secret Service firing into the crowd. But Portugal became a democracy. The people of Portugal and their colonies in Africa were finally free. As Larisa Tcaci Pires wrote nearly fifty years later: This is the dawn I waited for, the new day clean and whole, when we emerge from night and silence to freely inhabit the substance of time.

We see the blossoming of trees in San Francisco and throughout the northwest and understand the power of springtime. The power of flowers, the re-beginnings of life. We pray that flowers and springtime may have the power to end wars. While in the garden of our hearts, as with Thich Nhat Hanh, we pray that the flowers of peace may bloom beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RD96oWr12CZ0g&v=96oWr12CZ0g