The silence of the bees revisited

One night I had a dream in which we were scientists. The world was falling apart and people were looking to us for answers. The disintegration started with the honey bees. In the first instance, scientists found a virus in colonies that had collapsed. The virus was eradicated but the colonies continued to collapse.

The hopelessness I felt when confronted with the rising disorder of the universe seemed to settle in the well of my heart and I began to give up hope. No bees, no crops. In a world where technology ruthlessly ran away with itself, the pollination of flowers was still dependent on the design of nature. It was you who told me that most of God's physical, animal and human world is on the verge of mass suicide and extinction. I could not see how this understanding could help the bees. Our suffering is a crisis of meaninglessness but bees have no meaning. The co-evolution of plants and pollinators was driven by the blind fingers of mutation and natural selection, groping unconsciously in the dark. This mutualism knows no love.

‘We don’t start with the bees, we start with ourselves’ was your mantra and though I could not see the connection, time proved you right.Sometimes I go into the garden and listen to the bees. I am glad that their low song drones on, it means the garden is exactly as I used to dream it when I was a girl. The bumble bees punctuate the lavender bushes and the honey bees drink from the Aster flowers. I think about you and how you showed me that my remote, impersonal, disinterested God was far closer than I ever could have imagined. When I cannot believe that there is an answer and give up, it is then that I allow him to break through.I do not need to ask anymore about where you are. For in this divine glass our conversation is free as well as pure