Monday, March 10, 2008

Three Narcissus Occurences? Narcissuses, Narcissi?

The word Narcissus came up not once, not twice, but THREE times today. Kairle sent me a beautifully illustrated copy of the Daffodil Principle. I had never read it, but I did find a copy of it here (with musical accompaniment). The story is inspiring. Read it!

It moved me to go dig up and replant some of my very crowded daffodils (second sighting of the word). Spread the joy, you know! Daffodils and narcissus are the same thing. I couldn't find the correct form of the plural anywhere. Maybe narcissus, moose, and sheep are all in that black hole of non-changing plural words. I am sore all over from the digging, bending, etc. Not a pretty sight. And there's not enough Absorbine Junior in the world to make me feel better. I can barely wait to wake up in the morning! NOT!

Daffodils are the flowers that symbolize friendship. So stick a daffodil in your hat and be happy!

The third instance this word came up? During our family's devotional time, the apostle Paul, in the book of Romans (chapter 16:11) was thanking and naming many people. One of them (one of the few I could pronounce easily, BTW) was Narcissus. Ironically, we go around the room and each read a couple verses. We all sit in different places every night, but that was one of MY verses!

I wonder what type of person he was. Narcissism is "inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity" from dictionary.com, where I found out that my title does contain the 2 acceptable forms of plural narcissus. His mother must not have been aware of the meaning, because Paul's admonition was to "Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus". I'm quite sure he didn't mean the daffodil family!

Well, there's your friendship, gardening, and Bible lessons for tonight. You're welcome.

~Joan

4 comments:

PiecefulChaos said...

Daffodils are my all time favorite flower - I wish they bloomed a little longer. I am in the Northeast so we don't have any here yet - still waiting.

Libby said...

I have a little patch of daffodils that I need to dig up, separate and then replant. They have been quite confused and bloom in fall. I hope by digging them out and waiting to replant, I can get them back on schedule *s*

Marit Johanne said...

Did you know that in Norway the daffodils are called Easter lillies? I know you have a white Easter lillie in US.

Kairle Oaks said...

Oh, I'm so glad that your package arrived. I love this story. I have given this book many times and had given away my last copy a couple of years ago only to find out that it was no longer in print. I was looking for a used book last week and discovered that they are publishing it again.

I used to live about a hour from Lake Arrowhead, but didn't know about the daffodil garden then.