The Great Silencing
When Deep Listening with the Living World Was Lost
It takes time to listen deeply—to ourselves, to one another, to animals, and to the living world that surrounds us. Time that feels increasingly scarce in our ever-faster, tightly wound lives. Long before the turmoils of our present moment, deep listening to the natural world had already begun to fade. And with it, our intimacy with the plants, flowers, animals and landscapes that once spoke to us so clearly.
When I find myself getting edgy and irritable, I invariably find that it has been too long since I have deeply listened to a flower—since I have opened my heart wide to the natural world and really listened.
Even though it is winter, flowers have a way of finding us. For me, yesterday as I was realizing how disconnected I felt, I received a text from my brother-in-law with a picture of his hellebores beginning to bloom. And I knew they were calling me.
These plants, the hellebores, are also known as lenten rose, although they are not related to roses. They begin blooming from late December to February, pushing their blooms up regardless of the snow and cold, reaching for the returning light of the sun. Being native to Europe, they have a long history with western culture, at least as far back as the Greeks, when Pliny the Elder wrote about them as a cure for madness, even though the plant is highly poisonous.
All parts of the hellebore plant are toxic to humans and other animals, and this gives them a reputation of being protective and fearless. Living for several decades, they do not like to be uprooted, preferring to stand their ground and offer their deep devotion to the earth they are rooted in.
Hellebore said to me as I sat in contemplation with them, “We walk between worlds, bridging light and dark, poison and beauty, life and death. We rise to the returning light even on the coldest of days. We transform our own toxicity, and any toxicity around us into beauty, our heads bowed to the sacred Earth we are born of. Join us as we push through our fears together.”
Our ancestors used to talk to plants and receive messages from them intuitively and in dreams. But several hundred years of preaching the gospel of science has separated us so far away from the plant realm that we no longer trust our senses and intuitive knowing. This is a great silencing that has happened between us and all other life forms on this planet.
Author and herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner said in his book, The Lost Language of Plants: “That we take plant words in through our nose or our skin or our eyes or our tongue instead of our ears does not make their language less subtle, or sophisticated, or less filled with meaning.”
This denial of plant sentience is at the heart of our unravelling today. For, once we stopped listening to the world around us, we also gradually forgot that all living beings are sacred, that we live in balance with all life, and that we are the new kids in the neighborhood, younger than most all forms of life around us. Our hubris is our wall, our separation, from the reverence we once had for all life. When we began to see the Earth and all beings as resources instead of partners to collaborate with, we lost our ability to hear them. And the great silencing began.
Like the monks who are taking the time to walk across the country, putting one foot in front of the other; come, take the time with me to listen deeply, to hear the guidance and wisdom the flowers have to share. These beings who are millions of years older than we are and have experienced so much.
Allow yourself the space to open your heart and your intuition and enter the realms where we can connect with these beings so different than ourselves. Beings that have nurtured us from our very beginnings and love us deeply. Allow yourself this medicine that is such a welcome salve and a protection in our turbulent times.
This listening—slow, embodied, and relational—is something we were once fluent in. It is not reserved for mystics or elders, but available to anyone willing to make time and offer attention. When we listen together, in shared intention, the remembering deepens. The flowers meet us there, generous and patient, ready to guide us back into relationship with the living world, and giving us the grounding we need to navigate the turbulence we encounter in our daily lives.
As the year turns toward the ancient threshold between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox—a time honored across cultures as Imbolc, Candlemas, Brigid’s Day, and Groundhog Day—I am offering a five-week, live, online workshop called Awakening with the Flowers: Rekindling Our Intuition and Wonder to Connect with Our Ancient Elders. Together, we’ll slow down, listen deeply, and explore how flowers communicate with us—through science, imagination, intuition, and shared experience.
This is not a course about learning about flowers, but an invitation into relationship with them—as elders, allies and teachers.
In this live, online, experiential workshop beginning January 27th, you’ll be guided into relationship with the flowers—not as objects of beauty, but as wise, sentient elders with stories to tell and guidance to offer. Through science, imagination, intuition, and shared experience, you’ll discover how the flowers communicate with us and how we can open ourselves to their support, presence, and ancient intelligence. This is a space to reconnect with your inner knowing, deepen your joy, and revive the timeless bond between humans and the flowers that have always loved us.
“This is a powerful and unique workshop. I really welcomed this opportunity to follow my intuitive passion for flowers. Mary provides a space for didactic information, group discussion and experiential learning to help participants come to know these amazing, ancient beings and our relationship with them in a way that was fulfilling and had me wanting more!” – Merryl
Mary Porter Kerns is the author of the forthcoming book, The Flowers Are Speaking, A Million Year Love Story (Tarcher-Penguin Group, 2027) that is an intimate journey into the entwined evolution of flowers and human beings—weaving together science, history, stories, and earth-based mysticism to offer a radical vision of how we can best reconnect with the intelligence of plants and the ancient guidance of the earth. In fall of 2022 she self-published the first edition of her oracle cards, also called The Flowers Are Speaking, that sold out in three months.
Her highly acclaimed workshops teach participants how to experience the flowers as she does through their senses, intuition and imagination.
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A couple years ago, I had dreams three nights in a row, about Hellebores. Had never heard of them, checked things out with gardening friends. THIS one totally speaks to me, thank you for posting.
I spent the day at our conservatory, listening to the flowers and journaling. They had me learning about phytoplankton, their relatives who are working very hard to save this world.