The Hum of Creation by Anonymous

Little bee, good friend, hello! Do not mind me taking a seat in the grass as you climb through sprouts of lavender with your friends. I do hope I am not interrupting. I have someone I’m meeting here soon, but the weather is nice and you are here, so it is a good day to be waiting. It is pleasant to have found your company again. Indeed, indeed, I should let you get back to that, but I'm really sorry, I can't help myself. I just have to talk to you right now. There are so many things I want to tell you. You can listen, or you could playfully ignore me, or some surprising in-between. Just some suggestions, you’ll know what’s best for us. Whatever the case, I think you might like to hear some of the things I have to tell you.

Little bee, between you and me, I would like to be like you. Shh, but don't tell anyone that. It has to stay our secret. People might think I'm being weird otherwise because… I like watching you. I like your workflow. You do what you do, and you do it so well. You are everything I want to be, as far as this story is concerned. You live and you are, even in gloomy weather. You have been put on this Earth with a brilliant purpose! A purpose I do not see with much clarity. Maybe you are only here to pollinate for plants’ sake, or to dance with other bees on swaying stalks and savour sweet nectar, to live in hives and build homes, to be fuzzy and fill the air with your buzz. But one reason to me, at least, is clear. You are good! Your very -ness enriches everything. You are willed, and loved, and you are here.

You are everything I want to be, as far as this story is concerned.

Little bee, you cannot fail. You are animated and moved by beauties I cannot comprehend. For you, surely, this is another Tuesday. What must I, passerby and onlooker, even be blabbering about? Still, I blabber, and you are busy at work. You seldom think about why you are here, you seldom think of what you are doing. You do not weep at or contemplate your iniquity, for you have none! The good of your creation, of your life, in all its ephemerality, is nature! It is holy! You cannot help it.

Little bee, you are, and you are good! Equivocally! I praise you and creation! Beauty gives way to beauty, good to good! How beautiful it is then that I, as your beholder, by my very presence, add beauty to you who already is so! Recognising you for who you are! Sharing with you who you are to me! Salting the earth, as it were. Imagining, dreaming, flattering! May I be your witness, never losing sight, only embellishing, never reducing. I’d scream if I did. I could laugh. Your wonder brings forth tears, little bandages that line my sore, tired eyes. I want to be, I want to live, in all goodness, as you are. Dear friend, I confess I am not all well, plainly in most dimensions.

Beauty gives way to beauty, good to good! How beautiful it is then that I, as your beholder, by my very presence, add beauty to you who already is so!

I live in hope and patience with myself and the world, that we may be rightly ordered in a greater and loving scheme of redemption. It is, however, very hard. I long for an Eden I constantly glimpse, a world around me perfumed with exile. For the longest while, I haven’t really felt like here is my home anymore. As if I am called elsewhere, to a bigger bush with flowers and no thorns, you see. A promise waiting to be fulfilled, of which I am certainly assured, where all is good, and no one hurts, and we love each other. Naked, tender, bleeding. Bandaged, soothed in balm and nurtured, clothed.

Do you understand me? Like you, I too am. Broken, admittedly, as are you. Credit where credit is due, much more than you, and much more responsible for it. I am invited to the highest heights, but on the worst of days, I throw myself to the lowest lows. On a carpet matted and dishevelled with hair of all sorts, in my soiled, sour bed and clothing, in the grass next to sheep fields, as my stomach aches, vomiting early in the morning, I see that you are better than me because you are doing exactly what you should be doing. Everything with you is in its right place when it is very not in mine. Do you understand anguish? A pang in my chest. A bitter taste down my throat I can’t quite get rid of. Searing sometimes, it feels ever-growing. How much more can I take? Spit and tears and screams pooling on the floor of a very dark room, crawling – grasping at straws. The sound of waterfalls rings in my mind, a loud rumble. My room was very quiet. 

It is hard to remember that even when I am far from the good, I still have dignity, that we all do. It is harder not to despair, especially about my hard heart and callous actions. Harder still to realise that we are all called to a great deal of sacrifice. It is hardest to love. Friend, rejoice with me, though I am less than you on the worst of days, I am infinitely more dignified on the best. Somehow, despite my weakness and vindictiveness, I do have a place in all of this, and you, little bee, remind me to live faithfully in all weather, to respect my own dignity and that of others in living. It’s not my life, but rather someone else’s, that I should worry about. A loving life, it means everything. I’m glad that very little scares me anymore, that little angels are accompanying me wherever I go now. I wonder if they’ve always been there, carrying my downtrodden heart. From militant pilgrimage to triumphant home, perhaps without a penitent pitstop if you allow the joking and cavalier ambition of a young man out of line, I’ll get my peace. In so many ways, I already do. I’ve never been so happy, and I've never felt so much sorrow. This is the joy I’ve sought. 

Little bee, I want to be a storyteller, I want to invite wonder. I used to say I’d put myself on a page to survive, to prove, to make sense of, that that’s why I write. I wonder about writing elsewise too now, to pass the time, to rejoice with friends, and most certainly because I find happiness in it. All this, my life, might one day be an exceedingly graceful yet stubbornly paved look back, à la Tatsuki Fujimoto. However, standing where my hope is, I can’t fathom why I would. I think to when my bell will toll and I find myself deeply excited as to how forever shall pounce on and eat me up alive.

Au revoir, little bee. For two seconds back in June, in front of G, you helped me find peace. Nature and creation puts everything back in its right place, puts me in mine. Good life, good death. So, thank you, little bee, for this epiphany. Oh! And please do say hello to your friends for me. I hope they didn’t overhear. It’s just a little embarrassing, this vulnerability, as I’m sure you know. But not enough to not share with you, whom I love, my joy and crown. Good gives to all, I know. Beauty to beauty. Like a good kiss, if I’d like to make myself chuckle.