“God in His wisdom created the fly.
Then forgot to tell us why.”
Ogden Nash
My wife says that, about some things, I’m just plain neurotic. And – about some things – I guess I am.
Most people, for instance – having finished the smooth spreading of peanut butter and jelly on their respective slices of bread, then glancing down to see a fly standing, defiant, sinking his six legs deep into the jelly side – would likely merely flick an impatient hand in the fly’s direction, see that it had, indeed, departed, put the sandwich together and sit down to eat.
I just can’t do that. My brain kicks in, musing on the fact that this fly undoubtedly migrated to the kitchen from our backyard … a backyard dotted with dog droppings … which droppings this fly likely danced on with delight before seeking out more sophisticated cuisine and adventure beyond the door left open by wife … whose exasperation at getting up and down to open and close said door for our restless pup inevitably undermines her promises to keep that door shut and the flies away from her husband.
(Flies, like mosquitoes, either have no interest in my wife or else fear her in ways they don’t fear me. In our entire married lives, I’ve never once known her to be buzzed, bitten, or much bothered by their onslaughts. They save all their kisses for me.)
So, looking down at my flyless bread, I no longer see sweet jelly ready for the chewing. I see, in my fertile imagination, microscopic bits of mutt manure now integrated into the sandwich. And ‘m left with the prospect of trying to ignore that while I gag down my lunch, or of throwing out the sandwich and starting over (unfortunately, waste is another of my neuroses), or of skipping the whole exercise entirely and sitting hungry ‘til I get my appetite back.
All to say, the deep compassion I nurture for the rest of God’s myriad creatures I am inclined to deny to flies. And mosquitoes. And moths. And bees. Just don’t like little things flying all around me, dive-bombing me in my sleep or in moments reserved for relaxed distraction. Can't abide that spooky hum in my ear, the ominous aerodynamics, or the thought of them using exposed stretches of my skin as a landing strip or drilling field.
Like Mr. Nash, I find God’s motives in creating the little buzzers hard to fathom, or appreciate. Which gave me all the more pause this week when I stumbled on some new pest perspectives.
The day after that brazen fly took his meager nibbles of my jelly, I pulled up the kitchen window blinds to spy, there on the sill, his dead body (or that of a near-identical cousin). He lay there, flat on his back, six legs to the air. Pity did not exactly swell in my soul.
But I did fall to thinking about how the fly died. Trying, I guess, to find his way back outside. To experience again the beauty of that wide, beautiful world. He just wanted his freedom. And died in helpless frustration, never understanding what was keeping him from reaching it.
I know. It’s a fly. Only, I know so many people who have died like that.
Every day – on open streets, in crowded restaurants, in bustling offices, in lonely rooms – so many around me are dying that same way. For them, I should have more pity.
For them, I should offer more prayers.
The sight of the corpus de fly reminded me of a line in a favorite book of mine: The Bridge At San Luis Rey, a novel by Thornton Wilder that muses on mysteries of fate and questions of destiny.
“Some say,” Wilder writes, “that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God."
Does the God whose all-seeing eye is on the sparrow spare a glance, as well, for the flies He’s created? If so, He must surely nourish a purpose in their creation. And if He does, then He must have His purposes, too, for so many other things in my life that I can’t begin to appreciate, or explain.
Minute frustrations, like why the other line always moves faster, or what spun that strange dream. But bigger things, too: the unpredictable moods of my friends, and their strange silences. My own inconstancies. The pains of those I love and long to help – but really can’t. The sufferings of strangers that leave me feeling vaguely guilty and unsure of my responsibilities to “neighbors” I don’t really know.
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of,” Blaise Pascal said. And God – who forged our hearts and feeds our reasons – has His, too.
“And it shall come to pass in that day,” Isaiah writes,
That the Lord will whistle for the fly
That is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt,
And for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
They will come, and all of them will rest
In the desolate valleys and in the clefts of the rocks,
And on all thorns and in all pastures.”
So, perhaps, He does have His purposes ... for the birds and the bees, the skeeters and the flies. Ours not to question why – ours but to swat, and sigh.
And to take no little comfort from knowing that a God with plans for the gnats and flies has something in mind for me, too. Maybe even freedom, one day, in a beautiful world beyond what I can understand, or imagine.
Comments