Don’t ever make the vase more beautiful than the flowers.
The flowers have their own beauty.
The flowers will fade, will wither, will die.

The vase will continue.
Forever beautiful.
Forever fresh.

To put plain flowers in a fancy vase
is to draw away
from the now, the temporal, the elusive.

To put fancy flowers in a fancy vase is redundant.
Who would notice the flowers?

The vase must be tall enough
or short enough
or wide enough
or narrow enough
for the flowers.

The vase, like a frame for a picture,
isn’t the point.

It is what it holds that matters.

Nothing is stranger than a large beautiful vase
with just enough room in the neck for one flower.

It makes me want to get a weed,
a dandelion,
a thistle,
some privet,
and jam it in there.
I’d pretend it was as ornate as a hydrangea
as celebrated as a rose
as exotic as a bird of paradise.

There is an art to matching flower to vase.
I think God thinks the same thing when matching souls to bodies.
Except it is reversed.
The body is the vase,
but the body is temporal.
The soul is the flower
but the soul is eternal.

Sometimes, the simpler the body
the more elaborate the soul.