The Rose and the Thorns

There is a plant called Euphorbia milii, the Crown of Thorns. It doesn’t pretend to be gentle. Its beauty doesn’t erase its edges. It grows where others would not, flower and thorn, side by side.

Years ago, my pastor brought one into our church, the cathedral of Holy Trinity in my birth town Karpenisi in the mountains of Greece (the top image). Father Angelos had found it on one of his travels in the Holy Land and placed it beneath the crucified Christ. Its presence moved me. It stayed in the sanctuary as something both defiant and tender. I never forgot it.

But the image took deeper root in me long before I knew its name.

When I was a teenager, I often travelled with this same pastor, my second father, into mountain villages where he served small, isolated communities. I have been a reader in the Greek Orthodox tradition and part of the choir. With me beside him, we could run a full church service together.

After one such service, we were invited by some villagers for coffee and sweets in a local shop. It was a common courtesy.

When one of the men, turning to me, asked what many older villagers ask of young boys: “Who is your father?”

I answered, “I am the son of Andreas.”

The man laughed, with irony. “You? The son of Mossadegh?”, a mocking nickname for my father’s family because of their dark skin. “How is it possible,” he said, “for a rose to grow among the thorns?”

I was ashamed. I had no reply.

But my pastor did. He looked at the man and said, gently but clearly: “Be careful because even the rose has thorns.”

That moment shaped me. It wasn’t just a defense of my name. It was a declaration of truth:
– That I come from where I come from.
– That beauty can emerge from places others dismiss.
– That my dignity is not borrowed, it is rooted.
– And that love, when spoken with courage, can disarm even the cruellest tongue.

I’ve carried that moment into everything I’ve done since, in safeguarding, in survivor advocacy, in writing, in worship, in healing.

So when I speak of care, or trauma, or inclusion, I do not speak as a stranger. I speak as the rose that grew among thorns. And the thorn that protects the rose.