MLK and Marigolds' Message of Hope

Each autumn brings a season of change. The fall of leaves and events is mixed with shadows long forgotten but soon to return. This year I flirted with particular unease over the coming winter because its winds already hint that it might be long and deep. That unease shifted one evening as I readied to discard decaying marigolds killed by a November frost. This project page is to help pass on the hope I unexpectedly discovered that chilly autumn eve.

If you are like me, you do not always spend enough time in nature to recall the lessons our ancestors were more familiar with, the ones that helped them pass through almost unbelievable hardship with hope for the future. When the worlds I tend fall apart, I am tempted to view the results as a kind of garbage – something to be uprooted and discarded. It took seeds unexpectedly spilling out of a decaying marigold to remind me that death is pregnant with life and that the womb’s darkness is its cradle, as long as we are patient with that truth.

So, to spread hope during these difficult times, I want to give away dead flowers. They will likely be dismiss, until people realize the vision they hold in their hands:

MLK and Marigolds’ Message of Hope

The single most underappreciated phrase of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s is hidden in his hope that people will one day be “judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.”

I say hidden because the way King lived his life suggests that he did not want us to limit ourselves to looking only beneath people’s surface appearance into their underlying character. He was also imploring us to look beneath the dark surfaces of our daily troubles, of our unmistakable enemies, even of our own self-doubts, so that we could see the seeds, the intimations, the hope of something better.

I do not know if I feel the hateful travesties volleyed back and forth in the world today with such strong sadness because I have battled cancer or not. But I can say that standing face-to-face with the beauty and brevity of life made me far more mindful of them than I was before. The experience left me aware of what we all stand to lose if we remain unwilling to look honestly within our deepest selves.

This intuition reminds me of a moment during my treatment when I noticed my technician had a tattoo. When I asked about it, he lifted his sleeve to show me the full message, “For those I love, I will sacrifice.” I can think of no better encapsulation of the character King is asking us to look for beneath life’s surfaces than that.

From this perspective, the most important social questions are not ones of inclusion. They are those that look beneath the surface of the self and ask, at root, if each of us is more non-violent and loving today than we were yesterday. We may ponder if the arc of the moral universe bends towards good. Ultimately, the deeper question has always been if it bends towards non-violent love . . . and if, amid the selfish demands of daily life, we are willing to sacrifice in bending with It.

The vision I hope you will share with me, beginning with the Lehigh Valley and blossoming as far and wide as our flowers can travel from there, is to see the the vibrant red and yellow gift of African-Marigolds blooming from house yards to college lawns, from church vestiaries to capital gardens, from mountains, lakes, and to shining seas beyond.

I pray that their spreading crimson hues will remind us how much useless blood has been shed in the name of hate, that they will nudge us to ponder how exploiting the earth, its animals, and each other for blood-red gain are inextricably entwined. I hope their sun-yellow shades will move us, even in the smallest moments of our days, to try and be a bit better at love and light than we were the day before. And in the season of their deaths, I hope they will inspire us to embrace change, revel in the journey, and cherish the newborn seeds soon to be planted round the next turn of our sun.

Steps to Spread the Marigold Message

If you’re reading this page, you’ve likely received a dead marigold or some of their seeds.

If you’ve received a marigold, break it apart and gather the 35-50 black and straw-white seeds that drop out.

Save two or three of those seeds for yourself and plant them wherever.
- They can be planted in a medium to large-sized pot when you receive them.
- Or, after the last frost around the first of May, they can be planted around your home, campus, office, anywhere you can think of.
Imagine what communities will look like when they are suddenly abloom next season with marigolds everywhere, radiating their beauty and signaling to other likeminded community members that they are not alone in planting figurative and literal seeds of hope, even in the darkest of times.
Purchase some tiny paper, nylon, or plastic bags. Fill them with a few of the remaining seeds; right-click, print off, and enclose the QR code below; and give the packages as gifts to other people who you think would be inspired to do the same after a small explanation.
At the end of next season, save your own flowers, and pass the hope forward until it is everywhere an undeniable vision of our solidarity with nature and each other!