First Parish Unitarian UniversalistOh, Look, the Lightning Bugs!
A homily given by the Reverend Diane D. Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
June 10, 2007
The way my week went, it was yesterday afternoon before I sat down to prepare this little homily in praise of lightening up, summer’s greatest promise. At the time of the newsletter deadline, it seemed an uplifting end-of-the year topic, one that could be elastic enough to be a homily if the youth group decided they wanted to take a role in the service, or be a sermon if they didn’t. And, by June 10 th, I thought, we’d all be ready for lighter sermon fare, to go along with the lengthening, lightening days.
Well, as we all now know, the youth did decide to participate. And, I’m so glad! As the originator a year ago of the idea that we would combine our youth group with the Sharon congregation’s youth group, when it didn’t work out, due primarily I think to insufficient adult planning, I felt personally responsible, and very sad that we might never see our youth again. So, I’m so relieved to witness their witness here today!
Also, their perspective, their energy, their broad interests, and their commitments are deeply moving to me and so important to Unitarian Universalism as a movement. Also, it’s been said that it’s often the high school youth that prod, even lead, their congregations into more dynamic witness to our faith in the world. May that be so here!
And, to be honest, the way the week went, there was no time to write a long sermon, so thank you, youth group, for lightening my load!
So, here is the homily I wrote yesterday.
Today is not exactly a light-hearted day. It dawned gray. I spent the morning in a Canton graveyard.
Not a bright sunny graveyard with a gentle breeze flowing. But a wet graveyard, mist gathering into raindrops even as the mourners’ teary eyes gave way to weeping embraces. I didn’t know the deceased, but my heart was touched by the love so evident in his family, and it was saddened by their sorrow. This resonated with memories of my own father, who died twenty-five years younger than the man who died this week.
Not exactly a light-hearted day.
I drove home in a deluge, the traffic on Route 128 moving at a w-e-e-k-d-a-y slow pace. At home, an empty house awaited me, empty but for the dog, because my spouse is out of town, and of course he wanted to go out for a run, in the rain! (the dog, not my husband)
An upsetting letter in the mailbox, an interruption at the door, my tea got cold.
Not exactly a light-hearted day.
Do we choose to lighten up, or does it just happen?
It must be a little of both.
My plan for this topic is to link the lightening and lengthening of the days as summer approaches with the lightening-up of our spirits, and then that with what I recently learned about lightning bugs, one of my summer delights. But, on this not exactly light-hearted day, I now remember that even “lightning bugs” have a sad connotation.
There were lightening bugs out in my parents yard when the family gathered there the summer before my father died, and his four young grandchildren—my two kids, ages two and a half and five and a half, and their cousins six-plus and almost eight—delighted in running around the edges of the lawn, catching lightning bugs in the proverbial “jar from grandma’s kitchen.”
There’s a joyous black and white photo of the four of them taken then that I love, their bright faces laughing, two with missing-teeth-smiles, their little bodies all smooshed together for the picture, maybe some tickling going on, having a great ol’ time.
Do we choose to lighten up, or does it just happen? Maybe it’s a little of both.
Do lightening bugs choose to light up, or does it just happen?
Maybe it’s a little of both.
Listen to this, that I learned about the lights of lightning bugs from various sources among them naturalist Jim Conrad’s website “Backyard Nature.”
First, a note about their name: Lightning Bugs are members of the Beetle Order of insects, not the Fly Order, so they ought not to be called Fireflies, thought they often are.
So, do lightning bugs choose to light up, or does it just happen?
As you might expect, “flashing Lightning Bugs are trying to attract mates. Among most but not all species of North American Lightning Bugs, males fly about flashing while females perch on vegetation, usually near the ground.”
If the female sees a flasher and she's ready to mate she responds by flashing right after the male's last flash. A short “flash dialogue” takes place as the male flies closer and closer, [the female flashing her light so that the male can find her and then he flashes his again and so on] and then, if all goes well, they meet and they mate.
“So that a flasher doesn't attract a firefly of a different species, each Lightning Bug species has its own specific flash pattern. Flash patterns range from continuous glows to single flashes, to series of multi-pulsed flashes.
Among some species both males and females flash, but among others only the members of one sex do it. Some Lightning Bug species don't flash at all.”
“A few adult Lightning Bug species practice an especially tricky kind of cannibalism. Already-mated females emit flashes similar to the female responses to male Lightning Bugs of other species. When the male of the other species lands, the female emitting the false flashes pounces on the poor male and eats him!”
Knowing this now, a flashing Lightning Bug will never be the same!
Cool gray, rainy days not withstanding, summer is coming. The days will be long and the nights short for quite some time yet. The crows will awake us with dawn’s early light, too early, and the honey suckle will be fragrant once again. Fewer evening meetings. Sundays mornings to be at rest. Ripe red tomatoes, and peaches. Pond and pool, lake, ocean, hill and mountain beckon.
And, if we choose to lighten up enough to notice: oh, look, the lightning bugs are flashing!