A car alarm yanks me from sleep, because nobody is paying any attention to its yowling but me. I strain, listening toward the other bedrooms, worried that others have been bothered too and hear my son’s vocal tics faintly through several closed doors. I pray by reflex that his day won’t begin earlier than is best for everyone. The violence of his vocalizations have worked open wounds in us leaving nerves exposed and sensitive; this is our shabbiness, the look of once new clothes worn long and hard.

Caleb has fallen back asleep but I am now too awake to sleep. I get up and make coffee, mentally shift into my morning habit – slowly reaching for stillness. My mind drifts back to yesterday’s morning walk and the surprise of finding a bee swarm right there, hanging above my regular trail; how long have I been looking and not seeing it? All bees do not live in boxes, but they all do work with the ‘extras’ of an extravagant creation, like the ashy pollen from flowers.

flying alchemists,

make miracle from ashes  

beautiful and sweet.

Are there these transformation stations throughout creation? Am I one? Do we have the bee-like ability, a creaturely anointing, to take raw materials and transform them? Could the raw materials be as mean and rough as autism, vocal tics, ruptured routines and weary hearts? — as in, “…beauty from ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, a garment of praise for heaviness. “ * There is nothing after all, particularly beautiful about pollen; it can be quite menacing.

Pollen finds its grace in the crown of a flower. Where there is a pollen like dusting of weariness, grief or despair in my life, perhaps it is only evidence that I’ve been blooming courageously — or maybe just ‘bloomin’ courageous’!

© 2016 – Laurel Archer

*Isaiah 61: 3

PS – the swarm has been referred to the Langley Bee Club who will attempt to transfer and care for them appropriately.