Do you like it?? My friend Alex from Alex and Things designed it and I’m quite happy with it. I wanted to include an image of the lotus flower in my logo because of a couple reasons. For one, it’s the national flower of Vietnam, where I was born and where my family is from. It’s also just so beautiful and fragrant, and looks so graceful floating above the lake or pond. It’s also a symbol for purity, commitment, and optimism for the future. Awesome, right??
I also find it to be the perfect symbol for redemption and renewal. It grows out of muddy darkness at the bottom of the pond, yet its beauty is unaffected by it. Kind of like when our souls turn toward Christ and he erases away all our sins and makes us new again (Rev 21:5). Our dignity, beauty, and worth are not reduced by our past mistakes. In our Lord’s eyes, we are precious and beautiful!
A friend and I were talking about St. Therese of Lisieux’s imagery of souls as flowers in the garden of God, and were imagining what kind of flowers we would be (What? Is that not part of your normal everyday conversation?). I’d like to think I’d be a lotus flower, bursting through the darkness of my past, never ceasing to move towards the warmth of the sunlight above the surface. Gracefully moving to the flow of the wind and water, adapting to the changing current of any situation, yet firmly rooted in Christ. Well…it’s a nice thought, no?
In Vietnam, one of the first poems grade school children have to learn and memorize is this simple yet elegant poem about the lotus flower. I’ll leave you with the translated version here. It was the best version I could find, although English doesn’t do the poem justice.
“Nothing that grows in a pond
Surpasses the beauty of the lotus flower,
With green leaves and silky yellow styles
Amidst milky white petals.
Though mired in mud,
its silky yellow styles, milky white petals and green leaves
Do not smell of mud.”
~ Translated from Dinh D.Vu
