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Sunflowers for Distressed Hearts
“The sunflower is mine.”
—Vincent van Gogh
Distressed Hearts
One yr earlier than his dying, Vincent Van Gogh wrote to a good friend that he yearned “to make of portray what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been earlier than us. . . a consolatory artwork for distressed hearts.” This was the aim behind his artwork — to console the distressed and luxury the brokenhearted. Maybe for this reason we really feel comforted by his loving brushstrokes of variegated hues. Along with his palette knife, he tenderly labored the fragments of sunshine into textured waves of consoling colours and varieties. He gave us what he had hoped to provide: a “consolatory artwork for distressed hearts.”
Because the darkness of struggle rises within the East, we admit our want for comfort in artwork and in life. We lengthy for Lenten gentle — lengthening gentle to fight the darkness inside and with out. And sure, after a protracted winter, we lengthy for flowers! We will, in any season, flip to Van Gogh’s flowers, particularly his favourite, the sunflower — a flower he related to each gentle and gratitude.
As a result of the sunflower is the nationwide flower of Ukraine, we now have been carrying and posting these “little suns” as they characterize solidarity with Ukraine, hope for the way forward for democracy, and resistance in opposition to Russian aggression. However these luminous beauties characterize much more for the individuals of Ukraine, and the world, too.
Vincent van Gogh, Three Sunflowers in a Vase, 1888
Sunflowers As an alternative of Missiles
A peaceable democracy, Ukraine as soon as possessed the third largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. However on June 4, 1996, Ukraine gave up its final nuclear warhead on a former Ukrainian missile base. On this celebratory event of changing into nuclear free, the then US Secretary of Protection William Perry stated to a crowd that included dignitaries from the US, Russia, and Ukraine, “Sunflowers as a substitute of missiles within the soil will guarantee peace for future generations.” Then, they scattered and planted sunflower seeds on the location.
Sunflowers then turned greater than a nationwide flower. They gave us an emblem of peace worldwide, an icon of sun-drenched magnificence to free the world of nuclear weapons.
Van Gogh would have cherished this. In 1888, in a letter to his sister, he wrote that he needed to embellish his studio with nothing however sunflowers. Nothing however sunflowers! Is it any marvel that he stuffed at least twelve canvases with sunflowers? The sunflower turned his personal private creative signature, telling his brother Theo in a letter in 1889, “the sunflower is mine.”
What if all of us claimed the sunflower “as mine” within the sense of all it stands for. May we then turn into like these little suns, reflecting gentle to the world? What if we scattered sunflower seeds throughout our neighborhoods and communities? And particularly in locations the place tragedies have left a darkish void. Would this not supply consolation, comfort, and wonder to our brokenhearted world?
Sunflower Souls
Science reveals that the sunflower is greater than only a fairly face. Within the aftermath of the Chernobyl catastrophe, the sunflower stood alone as survivors within the desolated nuclear wasteland. They not solely survived however thrived and blossomed afresh. That is as a result of sunflowers are, in scientific phrases, “hyperaccumulators” that may take in toxicity at a excessive charge, therapeutic the soil of heavy metals and the air of radiation. Sunflowers assist pace up the method of constructing water drinkable once more. Sunflowers might not be capable to cease disasters, however they may help heal and restore. Their magnificence is greater than pores and skin deep. They’ve big sunflower souls that may take within the unhealthy in addition to the great for the sake of the world.
“Magnificence will save the world,” stated Dostoyevsky. Within the sunflower we start to see glimpses of this declaration unfolding in shiny fields of yellow suns. Sunflowers are, in life and artwork, gentle bearers of comfort, sharers of sorrow, resistant fighters in opposition to poisonous forces, and restorers of life and wonder.
Because the embodiment of undaunted resilience within the face of decimation, sunflowers maintain inside them the very spirit of resurrection hope. Might that hope carry peace in Ukraine and in each distressed coronary heart.
Vincent van Gogh, Nonetheless Life: Vase with 5 Sunflowers, 1888
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