The Violence of Bees | An Easter Reflection

by Tim Willard

I ran too fast. So, I decided to make it fun and throw myself down the hill—a perfect head first grass-stain. I slid right by her. She kept running and threw herself on me, “Yeah!” her two-year old lungs bellowed. The mountains sang.

When I caught my breath I ran, just fast enough, into some old friends and we talked about life and babies and church and the mountains—how beautiful they sang. The wedding party was detained with photos, so I sipped lemonade and nibbled cupcakes and continued to run into my past and present. Quick nuanced discussions, the kind that corner and reveal. We are all of us so much like bees.

We drove home through the mountains. In the graying they sang. The river echoed the round.

Shuffle, shuffle. Plunge the press. Coffee-hot, the morning soars. Hymns on the Airport Express usher us on to “the gathering”—it is a celebration. Our pastor speaks of Thomas, “My Lord, and my God!” After the Body and the Blood we are dismissed. I wipe my eyes and turn to run; I collide into radiating faces—brothers and sisters united. The soundman runs into me and grabs my baby girl. “I just want to hold her. She is beautiful.” We smile together, he gets his fill and more collisions ensue.

Lunch is a lovely fiasco. Two families, six children and a floor full of Teddy Grahams; the wait staff is patient as the girls scream and run. We adults raise our glasses and toast: “To the Celebration!” Once home, we all nap long and hard. Somewhere in the distance, the mountains sing.

The Easter weekend emerged from the week and grabbed my family and me by the throat. We loved and laughed, fought and cried and passed through the other side shaped by it all—the run-ins, the discussions, the here, there and everywhere. In the post-Easter week, I would learn of my mother’s new cancer, told to me through my Dad’s tears.

When I was finally able to sit and reflect on it all, life didn’t seem so grand—just full of tension.

But then my mind settled on the Eucharist, how it always seems to break me in half. How, on this Easter Sunday, it reminded me that grace and confession and love all coalesce in the person of Jesus—they are signatures of humanity made beautiful through the Divine. The immensity of his sacrifice welled up, pouring from my eyes. There was much to take in. I nearly drowned.

From the Eucharist my thoughts landed me somewhere mid the Trinity. I thought how God runs fast toward us, overwhelming us with his lavish love. I love that he can’t help but love. And those loving fingerprints are everywhere—especially on my family and friends and Easter lunch.

We are social creatures. With our loved ones we dance through this life, though it most often looks like frantic running. And we lean into one another, pushing headfirst to see who will give first. Then we fall in a heap mid tears and laughter and pain and joy. God created us this way and the mystery of the Eucharist completes the puzzle. We are only able to love because he first loved.

***

The bees in the back yard love the jasmine blossoms and blueberry buds. They hover, and then climb the popping plumage. They collide and swirl into each other high up into the maples. In a frenzied disappearing act, they abscond into the holly tree—a violent aerial display.

Are they fighting? Love making? Discussing? Laughing? Killing?

We are so much like bees, living the gospel mystery of the Eucharist in the wild collisions of life. And we disappear into death and sex and work and play in a violent showing that rings out, like the mountain song. One another, one another, one another, “our fellowship of kindred minds … like to that above.”

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