Lessons from the Labyrinth Lightning Bugs
Tonight, I was walking the labyrinth at twilight. I had just finished reading a chapter in a book that talked about using a variety of gestures and postures in prayer to express without words the prayer that we wish to make. (a really good book that I will say a lot more about a bit later.) So my walk had no “intention” other than to try to use pauses and gestures in my walk to see how they felt and what they might express from my heart.
So when I reached the center, I just sat.
As I sat I noticed the lightning bugs. The weather has been great for them so as the sun was descending behind the horizon their glow became more prominent. So I watched them. As I watched, I had a couple thoughts come to mind.
One was a quote from a Desert Father that I read in Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert.
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire? [LXXII, p. 50]
That has been a challenge to me ever since I read it. I have to confess that for too long my attitude has been much like Abbot Lot, thinking that doing my small part is enough and not to rise above my “lot” in life. This confuses smallness with humility. So this struck me first because of the absolute importance of humility to the desert fathers. The challenge I see in Abbot Joseph and in the lightning bugs I was watching was that the important thing is giving our all to God and allowing God to use us as much as God wants, not as little as we think we should be (or bigger than our britches on the other side). Those little lights are only small to us, to the lightning bug they are brilliant. Why isn’t it appropriate for us to give our best to God instead of our mediocrity.
Then as I watched I noticed something. I sat and watched hundreds of little lights fly around the labyrinth and the neighborhood, and except for one, all the lights rose skyward. I could see that those closest to me would then float down toward the grass while darkened, but then when they were alight they flew up. Some only flew a couple inches, some would fly up a few feet, but they almost always flew upwards.
A great lesson for Christians who want to shine their light for God. We do God no justice when we use our lights to bring others eyes downward. There is no value in using God’s gifts to us to bring people down to despair and depression and fear and hate. There are enough people in this world who gladly market death in all its various forms. We in the church need to use our lights to draw people’s hearts and souls up. Up to God’s glory. Up from despair to hope. Up from hate and fear to love and grace. This is not a call for simple optimism or a be happy attitude. This is an invitation to follow Jesus who descended to our depths and the extremes of death itself so we might be lifted up to the heights of God’s Get Dirty but Lightened Up love.
A humble boldness? A reversal of the gravity of death? Impossible for us, but that is why God came, to use the impossible in us to light up and transform a dark world with Life!
