Summer Spectacle

 

Firefly Magic

“Fireflies are stars that could not journey to the sky.”

Michael Bassey Johnson (Song of a Nature Lover)

Fireflies, or “lightening bugs” as Southerners call them, are peacemakers. It’s impossible to walk outside at the darkening of a summer night, watch the fireflies rise from the grass to begin their dance of blinking lights and not feel peaceful. There is something magical about them. They consecrate the night. I found a paragraph written by Brenda Sutton Rose, who grew up in Georgia, that comes as close to describing my childhood experience with fireflies as I ever could. She wrote:

“Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature’s festival of flickering lights.”

          That is a Southern summer—or it was when I was a kid. The only thing I would add is the scent of newly cut grass. Last night, I stood on the porch and watched this summer spectacle—fewer fireflies now, but just as magical. Crickets sang their sawing chorus, while human music backed them up from the Avondale brewery. The cricket chorus is better.

          This morning I dreamed that I was releasing lightening bugs from a jar and watching them fly away. I was reminded again of John Lewis’ words, echoing those of Jesus, “You are a light. You are the light…” I would like to be that, and have others be that—fireflies to the world. Magical. A blessing. Consecrating the day and night with our small lights. The fact that we are flesh and bones, and not phosphorescent green, does not mean we cannot be “the light of the world.”

C.G. Jung tried to teach us to accept our flesh and all its demands as sacred. He said that our bodies are the vehicle through which the “earthing of spirit, and the spiritualization of earth” happens—the sacred marriage of masculine and feminine principles. I happen to believe the earth is holy with or without humanity, but even so, we are the appointed stewards, are we not? In not pouring pesticides and herbicides on our little piece of ground, we support the fireflies that give us so much peaceful pleasure. That is how we step into our rightful position in the great circle of life. And I find that pretty darn magical.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane