Nan Keenan's (Social Work ’70) ministry of flowers started with a challenge from her sixth grade art teacher: Draw 750 daisies over the summer.
“The first drawings were just awful, but I did it,” she says. “That’s how I learned that if you stick with the creative process long enough, desire and determination count far more than skill; everyone can learn the techniques of drawing.”
It’s this sense that everyone can do it which Keenan brings to her floral art ministry as she creates gardens and helps others create gardens for themselves or others. Flowers are selected based on the names and qualities of a person and then are arranged in a floral design either painted by Keenan or created on her Bring Love Out of Me (BLOOM) software. Through the process of naming and associating traits with flowers to create a customized garden, people affirm and celebrate themselves and others.
“Words are like gardens,” Keenan says. “When someone tells you what they love about you, that means something. Creating gardens encourages people to reflect, relate, and to respond to the people and events in their lives.”
Flowers and words have always been important to Keenan. She was intrigued that people had communicated with fl owers throughout history—especially during the Victorian era. Keenan has been reading and collecting 19th-century ladies, botany books since she was 12-years-old.
That every flower has a name, and every name a flower is nothing new. Florigraphy, the symbolic use of fl owers coined in 1832, is evidenced throughout antiquity. The Greeks bestowed laurel wreaths to poets and olive branches to athletes during the Olympic games. The Romans were the first to imbue significance to the rose—sub rosa signified secrecy. The Egyptians celebrated the lotus flower or water lily that symbolized the [life giving] of the Nile river. Hinduism and Buddhism also share the potency of the lotus fl ower as both Brahma and Buddha are depicted on a lotus throne. In the Judeo-Christian religions, sacred texts such as the Song of Solomon are replete with flower symbolism.
Fast forward a few centuries. You see nobility, countries, states, and cities laying claim to a specific flower. In France, King Louis VI plucked the fleur-de-lis, the iris, for the royal emblem. In England, the House of Lancaster chose the red rose, and the House of York picked the white rose—and the conflict between the two houses was aptly coined the War of the Roses (1455–1458). The golden chrysanthemum is part of Japan’s imperial crest, and in the United States every state claims an official flower.
But it was Victorian women who resurrected, expanded, and popularized the language of flowers. During the 19th century, botany was a center stage past-time for wealthy women of leisure. The plays of Shakespeare provided rich source material, as can be seen in Hamlet in the flowers Ophelia carries: pansies for thought and rosemary for remembrance. In 1829, the first English floral dictionary was published, Flora’s Dictionary by Elizabeth Wirt.
It was in this decidedly feminine tradition that Keenan discovered a way that she could share her knowledge of florigraphy to encourage and honor others.
Keenan, who holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Carlow University, and a Master of Arts degree in teaching from the University of Pittsburgh, started to use florigraphy as a therapeutic tool in the mid-1970s during her spare time while she worked at St. Francis University as an instructor in child growth and development and later as director of Career Planning and Placement.
During that time, not only had Keenan taught her herself how to draw, she had also taught herself how to cross-stitch, and was selling her floral designs at artists fairs and local shops; then, on top of that, Keenan taught herself how to paint in watercolor. While mastering this art, she formed the Teatime Girls, a group of 18 women ages three to 73, who would come to her large country home to paint and talk about flowers. The only rule was, no negativity, pettiness, jealousy, or envy. They were there to encourage the unique gifts in each other.
“Painting flowers is all about recognizing God’s providence and creative beauty,” says Keenan. “It’s about encouragement and uplift ing your spirit. It’s about healing and peace.”
Keenan’s magnanimity and generosity imbues her flower ministry. From Teatime Girls the ministry grew into many areas including hospices, schools, corporations, shelters, theme garden plantings, and prisons. She worked with individuals with terminal illnesses, battered women, workplace and leadership groups, teachers, nurses, and social workers. Th rough this unconventional outreach Keenan offers healing, hope, and affirmation to others.
The notion of calling what she did in florigraphy a floral ministry had never occurred to Keenan. She just knew she was using her gifts to help others. It was the Mother Superior of a cloistered Carmelite monastery, who framed what she was doing, encouraging her with these words, “You have a floral apostolate. Go out to serve God’s children.”
The apostolate grew further with the challenge from Thessalonians to speak encouraging words. For Keenan, those words are flowers.
In her workshops and working with individuals, Keenan walks them through a three-part process: Pray or Reflect involves pondering in quiet prayer or scriptural reading and choosing words, Paint or Relate involves hands-on creation in paint, crossstitch, or graphic design, Plant or Respond is presenting the finished garden or cross to an individual or group. In some cases, especially with children, Keenan creates a plan to help them use the painting in managing grief, developing character, or honoring the legacy of a loved one.
Just talking with Keenan for a few minutes, you realize that you’ve met someone for whom, with faith, nothing is impossible, and who defies the limits of fear. A person with deep abiding faith, Keenan has taken enormous risks for what she sees is her mission: to honor and celebrate individual worth or legacy. She believes that by recognizing and illustrating that we are uniquely and wonderfully made, we are honoring God. It is an act of love.
Keenan says if your mission doesn’t remain pure the fruit won’t be good. And she lives by this creed, regardless of what it costs. Keenan says that her sense of a mission and the seeds of that faith were cultivated and tended well at Carlow. She credits her academic advisor and mentor, Dr. Mirta Mulhare, for teaching her that you can go wherever your gifts take you if you have faith.
“Dr. Mulhare inspired me at an impressionable age and I believe that a mentor’s love influences you forever,” she says. “She instilled confidence in me and also demanded the best from me. She was an amazing woman who helped you see into your uniquely feminine reservoir of gifts. Then she challenged you to draw from it. She taught me that failing is just another lesson and not to define success in earthly terms.
“For me, success is defined by God’s standards and how you make his love visible,” she says.
Keenan also cites Catherine McAuley and Frances Warde as pivotal role models. From McAuley she gleaned the wisdom and beauty of relying on God’s providence, of reverence for the “delays of God,” and not to give up when it seems things aren’t working out; and from Warde she learned that confidence is rooted in faith, not pride. Their model of friendship is a glorious garden.
The fruits of her labor are substantial. Keenan expanded Sarah Carter’s 1863 work of flower names to 10,000 entries and a floral dictionary, titled Dictionary of Floral Emblems. In addition she authored Tyler’s Sunflower Treehouse, Meredith’s Meadow, and The Monk in the Meadow. Keenan has shown her gardens in numerous exhibits and juried shows; has been commissioned to create original watercolors for Nelson Mandela, victims of flight 93, Florence Griffith Joyner (FloJo), Rosalyn Carter, and the Oklahoma bombing victims, to name a few; published articles and artwork in floral and faith magazines; taught classes in social botany; is a much sought-after speaker who also makes TV and radio appearances; implemented her BLOOM software in hospitals and other organizations. She cautions that her work only truly blooms when it is rooted in the loving words of others.
Putting all that aside, for Keenan, it’s not what she gives to others that she cherishes most, it’s that others know how much she treasures what they give.
She mentions the garden drawn on a handkerchief in colored pencil that women prisoners gave her as a thank you for a garden workshop. Because the gift was a gesture of how the women had grown in their love of God, others, and themselves, Keenan had to risk smuggling it out since she couldn’t accept gifts from prisoners.
For the last two and a half years, Keenan has traveled more than 67,000 miles throughout the East coast and Midwest giving workshops and off ering individual support to the terminally ill—many times staying in clients’ homes for extended periods of time. She returned to western Pennsylvania last July hoping that God has transplanted her home to stay, so she can be closer to her children and family.
When creating gardens to celebrate special occasions like anniversaries or birthdays, and when designing memorials, Keenan prays fi rst that the design will celebrate life and bring comfort. She adds three drops of holy water to her brush water and then draws a tiny cross to represent God’s love for us and the grace that comes from suffering. As she adds each flower, the seeds of faith and love emerge blooming with hope and affirmation for the person who receives the gift of a garden.
An artist, educator, grief counselor, entrepreneur, and fl oral minister, Keenan currently has classroom space at Berry Vine Gifts in Bradford Woods, Pa. Her new business venture, Mouse in the Meadow, will make BLOOM soft ware available to the public. She continues to paint originals and to speak encouraging words, usually with flowers.
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