Intersecting With Insects

Early one evening while taking a walk and I happened to look down at the road. It was paved with blacktop, somewhat specked, as usual, so that the colors of grey stones and black tar blend together.  One of the stones seemed to be moving, which I thought was odd. Perhaps my eyes were not focusing correctly, or I was seeing a reflection from the setting sun. I bent down and looked more closely, and realized that the moving object was not a   rock but a small black insect. This insect was lurching from right to leave.   Looking closer, I saw that it was carrying something about twice its own size.  Now on my knees and peering even closer, I noticed that it was not an ant nor a beetle but an insect with wings that had caught some other insect, and could hardly move it because of the disproportionate size. 

On another night I was inside and noticed that a moth had gotten into the house, it was a big white one, with almost translucent wings. It was fluttering close to a light and                                                                      hitting against the wall nearly. It was drawn to the light but didn’t realize that the surface behind was solid, so it kept on fruitlessly trying to achieve its goal. I cupped my hands around the moth and felt its movement in my hand, and walked to the door to release it into the night.

Cleaning the cobwebs one day, with a dust cloth, I noticed a very tiny red insect, no bigger than a pinhead. I wanted to save it and put it out side, but in my haste, I lost sight of it, and then realized that I had probably crushed it inadvertently   with my hand.

Its summer, friends and the insects are here; the creeping creatures and the flying creatures are outside, inside, all around us. Sugar ants are in the kitchen, finding food in every crevasse. Carpenter ants are looking for a juicy piece of the roof.  Paper wasps build a nest and one or two fly in the house.  Bees feed on the clover. A pale yellow butterfly flirts with the flowers. Perhaps these insects are heavenly messengers, telling us something about a way to live, and the way God’s creation intersects with ours.

Now, perhaps you are thinking..bugs ? I came to church to hear about strange encounter with insects ? Aren’t there other problems in the world, or more momentous things to talk about? ?  True, but sometimes there are little things that tell a bigger story. 

Insects, like all creatures are part of the created world. Some are pests, but even many of them serve a useful purpose, as food for other insects or animals. Some insects are really useful to us, especially the bee with its power to make honey and pollinate so much of the world crops.  We have learned that as so many beekeepers reported a decline of their hives and agriculture suffered.  So even if we recoil at the sight of a spider or are afraid of wasps or allergic to their sting, we may find something interesting in the insect world, even if it only to recognize these that these creatures are part our natural environment, and therefore God’s creation. And perhaps they have tales to tell. in their silent ways.

This funny drunken sailor of a winged insect creeping along with its prey struck me as a metaphor for so much of our lives. We are so burdened…with all that we have and all that we can get, that we lose our first vocation, which is to use the wings we are given, to fly. We are so busy accumulating that we don’t really appreciate what we have, right here right now. And so we bumble along blind to the beauty, and burdened.  Until we release our grasping, and fly free.

The moth, seeking to escape into the light…frantically trying to get somewhere and not realizing that to head into the wall over and over again will just exhaust one in futile effort.  But how often do we act like that moth, pushing against the wall, angry that it does not budge. Interesting, in order to help that moth get out, I had to contain it in my hand, which it did not like at all. As it fluttered in my hand I realized that sometimes we do need to contain ourselves, restrain ourselves or be contained or restrained.  This holding back, as difficult as it may be, often is the wise route. Not answering back in an argument. Turning away from a temptation, be it that extra sweet or that second helping of a rerun TV show. Or that first drink which, if we were to take it, would not be the last.

And the tiny red bug, so fragile, so minuscule.  It was simply living, being a tiny red bug.  But my haste to clean up, and finish my own work and check it off on my to do list, that rushing behavior killed him in an instant. Sure it was an accident, but that encounter reminded me of the cost of rushing, and not paying attention.

Today’s psalms speak to us of the connection between the natural world and our own. In psalm 8, our call to worship, the psalmist wonders about the big universe that God has made, and the small, yet crucial part that humans play. We are to have dominion over all the creatures that exist, dominion that was granted to humans as part of the created order. Within this dominion, however, is responsibility to care for creation, not simply dominate it.  This is the origin of the environmental movement, and probably extends to the love we have for our pets, and why some chose to be vegetarians. All of these point to the relationship we have with the natural world, that we cannot simply use it or exploit it without consequences.  As we are learning again and again, as the carbon we release into the atmosphere is accelerating climate change and so much is damaged by the wild weather, floods and fires.

Our relationship to nature must be one of responsibility, and we take that seriously here at the Spring Glen Church.  Witness the recognition by the united church of Christ Connecticut Conference for our achievements in creating a green community among us. This is a vital and life giving ministry, which we carry forward.

  And in the psalm, we see the inspiration for all the efforts to go green:  awe, wonder, and joy. The tone of the psalm, which expresses that awe, Awe that the whole of creation is beyond anything that we can imagine. What are humans that you care for them? A refrain that can echo in our hearts when we look up at the vast sky at night, from the vantage of a camping trip in the county or hiking up the Sleeping Giant, or sitting in our own backyards at night, watching the interplay of clouds on moonlight, so vivid this week. .

This tone of awe and wonder continues in psalm 148, where we hear the exhortation: all   creatures, climbing and flying and walking, all of you are to praise God. The entire natural world is to praise God. Trees Rocks, Water.  We hear the imperative tense: you should praise God. the command. And that has its place.

But another reading of this exhortation would be these creatures by their very nature, their very existence, show forth God’s praise. They don’ have to do anything, their very existence tells of God’s glory.   This reading echoes what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:  “consider the lilies, they neither toil nor reap but even Solomon in his glory was not clothed as one of these” The very beauty of creation is the praise of God, a circle without end.
Hear these words now of Mary Oliver, as she, like the biblical poet, sings praise for nature and the gift of life:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
The one who has flung herself out of the grass?
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
Who is gazing around with her enormous complicated eyes?
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell, me. What is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Back in my garden, the bird is feasting on a worm; the cats are fighting at night. At the local farm, the ducks are parading and the cows are in the distant pasture. Watch them wondering what we can learn, watch them wondering how they know their place in the order of things. And  watch them in wonder.
All of these big and little creatures have something to tell us about the superabundance of God’s created order. Their message may not be loud or complicated, nor the stuff of news broadcasts.  But these heavenly messengers tell us that God creation is vast, and complex. That it reflects God’s glory in ways we can only dimly perceive. But we know as real. And we learn that all of these, from the miniscule insect to the mammoth elephant, have their place and have their role. If we pay attention to their form and function, their actions and how we intersect with all of nature, even the insects, who knows what we may find?  Perhaps our own tiny tales of encounters with creatures in this holy garden, which is our world.