The Gift of Honeysuckle

Yesterday afternoon I smelled it before I saw it.  It was the pervasive and unmistakable fragrance of honeysuckle. There are certain sights, sounds and aromas that trigger in me a mixture of joy and of pain. Honeysuckle is one of those fragrances.

There are 20 species of honeysuckle native to North America. But since I don't know one from another, it's all just honeysuckle to me.  Medical professionals have found a myriad of medicinal uses for the plant including treatment for digestive disorders all the way to help with diabetes.

The first morning I started out to sell books door-to-door the summer of 1971, I smelled honeysuckle. I used honeysuckle as a sort of talisman. But instead of believing the vine was endowed with any magical powers, I thought it was endowed with spiritual powers.  I mentally referenced the Bible verse, "I am the vine and you are the branches" and accepted the honeysuckle as a symbol of God's presence. Every morning I tore off about a foot of the vine and put it in my sales kit. Every time I opened the kit I could smell it and I invoked the presence of God.

The honeysuckle is a mixed bag for me.  I certainly enjoy the fragrance that pervades my back yard. And I enjoy plucking a flower, biting off the green tag and sucking the nectar from the flower.  It tastes like summers at my grandmother's house. Her country farmhouse yard and the surrounding woods were filled with honeysuckle vines.  Anywhere there were shrubs and bushes there was honeysuckle.

So then what's wrong with honeysuckle?  Why do I have mixed feelings? Nothing's wrong with honeysuckle. It's the fragrance of heaven and the nectar of the gods.  But the fragrance makes me homesick.  I'm not only homesick for Granny's farm outside of Enterprise, Alabama, but I channel that homesick kid selling family Bibles in Kentucky.  I simultaneously am very proud of him and very sad for him as well.  That seventeen year old Alabama boy was as mixed up as anyone could be. And he was mostly alone a long way from home. I know all too well that he had problems honeysuckle couldn't fix.   But it made him feel better, so for that I am very grateful.

And to this day honeysuckle still represents for me the presence of God. Just the fact that it's there fills me with happiness. It's not like I planted it or watered it or tended it in any way. And yet it remembers to grow every summer with absolutely no effort from me. It's a gift.  As I pluck a flower and suck the nectar, such as now,  I am still  reminded that I am grafted into the vine. That lonely mixed up kid did a good thing from which I still benefit.  I am aware that my life is a part of something much bigger than I am.  I am filled with an awareness of the Mystery that pervades my sight and  my senses.

In the scheme of things, it's the joy of honeysuckle that supersedes the  pain.  I'll always miss my grandmother and will always hurt for that salesman in Kentucky, but I welcome the honeysuckle to my yard year after year. Some things that hurt, hurt good.

For some people the bread and the wine works best, I'll take honeysuckle any day.