Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser: ladybugs

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Go Toward the Dark

Ladybug season again at our place.

This one crawled along the book, the pen and then my glasses.

Spiritual gurus admonish us to “go toward the light,” and especially in this winter season of a pandemic, that seems preferable to wallowing in darkness. But a line in a poem entitled “Lux et Veritas” in J. Barrie Shepherd’s latest chapbook, A Poetic Pandemic Christmas Pudding, reminds me of the vitality of darkness.

Contrasting our light displays during this season with the humble lighting of Jesus’ stable cave that allowed “the clear radiance that streamed above, around, beyond that battered-blessed manger,” poet and pastor Shepherd recalls introducing his first granddaughter to “the black-velvet-spread celestial of The Milky Way” “one sparkling island night in Maine”:

Her sheer astonishment made clear that we must
claim our darkness too, if we would glimpse
the glory of the elemental light.

Sunday over Zoom, Ormewood Church had a glimpse of the glory that may come when we “claim our darkness too.” Preaching on Mary’s Magnificat, Rev. Jenelle Holmes shared a recent dark moment in her life and offered her own “Magnificat,” and she has graciously allowed me to share it with you:

My soul deepens and broadens the Lord’s presence and my spirit rejoices with God who saves me each and every day. God has looked with eyes of mercy on me, when some in the world have looked on me with disdain. God has seen the ways I am held back by others and has handed me support. People call me blessed because God has walked with me on hard roads of rejection, depression and anxiety and anger, and God has carried me through. God’s name is holy and God is a holy space for me. When I could have turned around and cursed God, I took God’s presence seriously and God has honored that with a strong arm of confidence and love.

Those who wish me harm through rejection or fear or ignorance, God has dealt with in the privacy of their hearts. Those who have sought to harm me by using their voices of privilege, even in the church and in my family, God has shouted over them that I am loved and that I am who I was created to be.

And as I look to my neighbors who are without homes, I have seen God’s people provide shelter. As I look to my neighbors who have lost their jobs, I have seen God’s people write checks. As I look to my neighbors who are lonely and isolated, I have seen God’s presence ignite ideas and rhythms of faith. As I look to my neighbors who have experienced one setback after another, I have seen God provide one day after another.

And the rich, the powerful, the ignorant: God will show them the emptiness of their greed. They will be hungry for the good work of God.

And as I think of how God helped ancient Israel escape Pharaoh, how God has helped the barren experience new life and the dead come back to life, and the marginalized be handed a voice, I remember God’s mercy forever, in every generation, even my own, even in 2020. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices with God who saves me each and every day. –Rev. Jenelle Holmes

Having lived in a metaphoric dark closet during my childhood and youth as a gay kid, I knew where the light was—it was outside my protective, defensive, even necessary shell. The glory of God and my own glory lay beyond my captive, seductive defenses and others’ captive, destructive offenses. Remember Jung’s suggestion that religion is a kind of defense against God? My closet—my and others’ rigid conceptions of God—kept me from God’s glory.

My most recent “aha” about who God is, is that God is the glory at the climax of the prayer Jesus taught us: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.” That glory is unknowable but visible in the infinite wonders of the universe, in myriad forms of life, and in human compassion and imagination. This is the prophet Isaiah’s “light that shines in darkness.” It is the “shekinah” of Yahweh’s divine presence. It is the glory that brightened Moses’ face and lifted Mary’s soul, as well as our own souls through Immanuel, God-with-us.

I pray this glory for you as you approach this Christmas:

God bless you and keep you;

God make God’s face to shine upon you,

and be gracious to you;

God lift up God’s countenance upon you,

and give you peace. Numbers 6:24-26

Then we may attend to this summons in another of Barrie’s poems, “The Coming of the Light”: “Look deep into this gentle fire, and then go forth to bear it, far and tender, to wherever infants, cold and frightened, tremble in the dark with no bright star, no kings to greet.”

For your own copy of poet and pastor J. Barrie Shepherd’s holiday chapbook: A Poetic Pandemic Christmas Pudding, please send a check to J. Barrie Shepherd at 15 Piper Road – K325, Scarborough ME 04074. Copies will be signed and can be inscribed by request. Or order though his email: barrieshep@aol.com. $10 per copy plus $2 postage. Proceeds go to food pantries in his area of Maine.

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Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Where Ladybugs Come to Die

Wade and I have moved back into my house in the Ormewood Park neighborhood of Atlanta, two blocks from where we lived before.

This is the home that received a house blessing from my church, was graced by two visits of my mom from California, witnessed the end of one relationship and the beginning of my present one, was blessed by two loveable and loving golden retriever/Labs, Calvin and Hobbes, and offered hospitality to overnight guests such as John McNeill, Henri Nouwen, Erin Swenson, and Rick Ufford-Chase, then the Presbyterian General Assembly Moderator. This house also hosted parties, including a reception for MCC friends visiting Atlanta for General Conference.

The year I served MCC San Francisco, it sheltered my friend Jim Mitulski whenever he came to Atlanta while serving as MCC’s regional elder, becoming also an office for him and administrative assistant Ritchie Crownfield.

During that time I jokingly called it an MCC “safe house” because of the occasional MCC pastor or denominational leader who stayed here when visiting the city. At MCC gatherings I would sometimes have people tell me with a smile that they had stayed in my “cute little house.”

This house then welcomed my former partner in recovery and subsequently others in transitional periods of their lives. All “loved” the home it provided them.

I longed to return, not so much because of the house itself, but because of its placement overlooking a green ravine and creek with long-lived tall trees, which I see from my home office windows whenever I look up from my laptop as I write this. Sitting on its small deck to do my morning prayers feels like being on retreat.

But I had forgotten about the ladybugs.

As a child, the only bug of which I was neither afraid nor annoyed was the ladybug.* It was small and cute and round and red and landed unthreateningly on me or a plant or surface. It would not be until I was an adult that I learned how beneficial they are to the environment, happily consuming plant-devouring aphids. I also learned that, possibly for that reason, they are considered lucky or a good omen.

Every time a ladybug has landed on me throughout my life, I have smiled.

As I moved some boxes into the attic space off our master bedroom, I remembered about the ladybugs. Just as Tippi Hedren discovered birds in a similarly tight space in Hitchcock’s The Birds, I found dozens of far-less-threatening ladybugs—all dead. I remembered that this was, for some unknown reason, the place where ladybugs come to die.

A few make it inside the house itself. By our bathroom sink I have turned more than one ladybug off its back and onto its feet in a vain attempt to prolong its tiny life. Adjusting the pillows on our bed, I have been careful not to hurt the occasional ladybug crawling on our headboard. But I have given up opening window screens to free ladybugs who find their way inside.

Maybe it’s the sky-blue color of our house that attracts them. Maybe it’s the warmth in colder months and the coolness in hotter months.

Maybe it’s the same thing that attracts us and all who have found hospitality here, a welcome to be what they are and a welcome to become what they will be. Maybe they come here to die because they know they will be left alone; they will not be squished or sprayed or swatted or shooed.

They only make us smile, but not without regard for their passing.

Didn’t Jesus say something about ladybugs? “Not one shall fall to the ground without God knowing”?

*I didn’t realize then that butterflies were “bugs”!

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