Spiritual Heroes: George Washington Carver

"The Man Who Talks with the Flowers": George Washington Carver

By Stephanie Rutt

 ‍

"How do I talk to a little flower? Through it I talk to the Infinite. And what is the Infinite? It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies."

(Dr. George Washington Carver)

‍

Having been an interfaith minister for twenty years, I have hundreds of books in my personal library on a wide variety of theological and spiritual topics. But one short, 62-page booklet, is one of my favorites: The Man Who Talks with the Flowers: The Life Story of Dr. George Washington Carver by Glenn Clark. It’s the resource for this sharing.  

Most people know Dr. Carver as the one who discovered over three hundred uses for the peanut and over one hundred and fifty uses for the sweet potato. Some may remember him as a renowned agricultural scientist, a Black man who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deep in the hills of Alabama, who always wore a flower in the button hole of his jacket—the old, scruffy, black one—he bought for about $2.00.

But few know of his deeply spiritual side and to what and to whom he credited his amazing discoveries. A clue: consider how he started each day.‍

" All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and talked with God. There he gives me my orders for the day. After my morning’s talk with God, I go into my laboratory and begin to carry out his wishes."‍

He was fond of calling his laboratory, “God’s Little Workshop,” declaring, “No books are ever brought in here. And what is the need of books? Here I talk to the peanut and the sweet potato and the clays of the hills and they talk back to me. Here great wonders are brought forth.”

At the heart of the matter, Dr. Carver was a man of unshakable faith. He said humbly, “There is literally nothing that I ever wanted to do that I asked the blessed Creator to help me do, that I have not been able to accomplish. It’s all very simple, if one knows how to talk with the Creator.

And when asked, “You have a habit of talking to the little flower or peanut and making it give up its secrets. How do you do it?”

“You have to love it enough,” answered Dr. Carver. “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.” And he added, “When I silently commune with people, they give up their secrets also—if you love them enough.”

When I first read those words many years ago, they led me to contemplate just what was this love to which he was referring. I came to realize that it’s not the more common emotional love we’re used to thinking about that can grow and wain with circumstance. No. I think the love Dr. Carver was referring to is what I would call devotional love -- a love so complete unto itself that it needs nothing.

For example, when I’m able to listen to another person with this kind of devotional love, my own agenda, thoughts, imagined replies are not playing in the background waiting to chime in. I’m able to be completely present to the one right in front of me because I’m not in the way. Simple, yes but, surely, not always easy.

For Dr. Carver, this devotional love was the first of three prongs on a golden key he said he always carried in his spirit. The other two prongs were humility and expectancy, sometimes called wonder or awe. Indeed! When our hearts are resting in devotional love, it is so clear that we are just simple instruments for what may be, and such an experience naturally brings wonder and awe.

The life of Dr. Carver has had a profound influence on me. For some time now, when I go to our off-grid wilderness camp we call "3 Feathers," I take my drum and go out to sing to the land. I have a special rock I call the “singing rock” where I go to sit and imagine communing with the stone people, moving into the spiral of tree trunks, hearing the silent call of the invisible forest beings, the fairies, gnomes and elves, and seeing with soft eyes into the soul of the world. I sing what I feel and, sometimes, if I’m just still and quiet enough, all the world sings back to me.  

When our hearts are resting in devotional love, it is so clear that we are just simple instruments for what may be, and such an experience naturally brings wonder and awe.

Dr. Carver is perhaps best known for being able to talk with the flowers as he felt they were windows through which he could see the face of God. Toward the end of his life, he shared an important message he’d received from a little flower: “It told me there is going to be a great spiritual awakening in the world, and it’s going to come from people connected with you and me, from plain, simple people who know, not merely believe, but actually know God answers prayer. It's going to arise from men who are going about their work and putting God into what they do, from men who believe in prayer, and want to make God real to mankind.”

While Dr. Carver was a Christian, I don’t believe it matters what faith tradition you practice as all religions can agree that God is love. And his life gives us a glimpse into just what that love might look like in real life—emanating from the peanut, sweet potato, clays of the hills, flowers, and, most blessedly, from the eyes of our neighbor.  

Can we too imagine loving enough to see all creation as that window through which our Creator speaks? Can we too love enough to join hands across faith traditions, with all God’s children, to create that great spiritual awakening? It just may be, in the end, what’s needed to save us, our world, from escalating chaos and destruction.

But like Dr. Carver, I have hope that it’s possible. Why?

The flower said so.

When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.

Dr. George Washington Carver

‍