One of the hardest things to understand about beauty is how much pain sits next to its joy. Look at this rose. Inside its beauty do you not also feel some sense of pain? Not only the awareness of the thorns that warn you to touch carefully, but the knowing that beauty often draws tears with its joy.
Each patient or client in need – the patient with cancer, the child that has been abused, the homeless woman – is beautiful because he or she is human. When they are in pain, they remain beautiful and the compassionate among us feel the thorns of their pain and do not turn back. I admire and love the patients and caregivers of this world. I think they are gorgeous beings. Caregivers bring their love and attention to complete strangers – and they do it for inadequate pay. Some may think of doctors as rich. But in my thirty years of experience, I find that most physicians are underpaid for the hard and dedicated work they do to bring healing to those in need. The best caregivers embrace the beauty of the rose always knowing they will sometimes suffer the wounds of her thorns…
The more beautiful the caregivers work, the more likely it is to hold pain as well as joy. Human beings in need resemble roses. Their humanity makes us want to reach out to them. This is what Mother Theresa and other lesser know lovers see when they look into the faces of the poor and the weak. And the more vulnerable they are, the more they take on other characteristics that lie beneath the face of the rose. It is the business of a rose to be beautiful. And it is her nature to wear thorns as well. That is why the best caregivers need such great courage. Love is beautiful and love hurts.
…
The Business of a Rose
.
Nothing hurts the soft surface
of my finger tips as does the betrayal
of her thorns.
All I wanted was to tip
her close enough
to taste.
But I was rude. I should have
folded my hands behind my back
in the manner of a museum patron,
a scientist studying a specimen,
or a suitor not yet permitted
to touch.
I should have polite-leaned instead
of sweeping her to me as if the two
of us were married.
It is the business of a rose to hurt.
Not only the thorns that soldier her spine,
but her leaves, her lips, the way the breeze stirs
her negligee, the curl of her rain-wet tongue,
the shadows that shade-light her skin,
the way she sways on her stem.
The business of a rose it to hurt:
The thorns, the leaves edges,
& then her face, her heart-
tearing beauty,
her scent.
.
Reflection: Stay with these images for awhile. Roses are good metaphors for life. Living life to its fullest means embracing her beauty knowing we will also be wounded by her thorns. Living life takes courage. But the alternative to pass through life in the half-light of mediocrity.
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Journal of Sacred Work 
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