Confetti In May

The best of the annual cherry blossom flowering is over now. It was spectacular while it lasted, the boughs heavy with clusters of pink and white flowers. However, last night’s fierce winds have shaken the boughs and brought snowfalls of petals, dusting the pavements and gardens, drifting into heaps.

 

They look like confetti, these brightly colour pieces of paper that we see - less frequently now - sprinkled on the church path and on the street outside, reminding us that something beautiful and marvellous has just happened – a wedding. The fallen petals also speak of the recent sacrament of spring blossoms, both gifts of love and beauty.

Both are fragile, but for different reasons. In Japan, the cherry blossoms arrived a week early, and Takashi Yoshida, a climate expert at the Japan Metrological Society, blamed “a warming climate and urbanisation.” In England, the rate of marriages is very low historically, and the government is attempting to redefine marriage - which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one women to the exclusion of all others - to something else.