"Have you ever seen a rose, my God has and he loves her...." Indeed, a rose is an expression of God's love with its being, design and purpose. And it purpose is not just to be but to live in relationship not only with the bee who pollinates it and makes is fertile but also to live with mankind who took it from the wild and transformed its appearance in many ways.

In creating the rose, God foresaw that it would have a transcendent value for man. It would speak to man and woman of LOVE in many ways. In the harem of the Middle East a red-bud rose meant budding desire. An open red rose signified that one was full of love and desire while a white rose asks," Will you love me?" A Yellow rose instead asks "Don't you love me any more?"

In ancient times the rose was dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty thus signifying the divine in the realm of love.

The rose in the human-religious sphere has many associations held together by the golden thread of "Love". It symbolizes purity as well as passion, virginity and fertility, death and life. "The rose garden is a symbol of Paradise. It is the place of mystic marriage. In ancient Rome, roses were grown in funerary gardens to symbolize resurrection. The thorns have represented suffering and sacrifice as well as the sins of the Fall from Paradise." (Fra. Thomas D. Worrell, A Brief Study of the Rose Cross Symbol)

Symbol of Transcendent Love

Please click image to hear The Rose Melody. Music courtesy of Sally Fletcher at <www.heavenlyharpist.com>

Even in our own day the rose plays a part in contemporary themes of love, poetry and music. The following is an example:

THE ROSE

Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and you it's only seed.

It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dyin', that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.