John came hurrying into the kitchen and hunted for the baking soda.
"I got a bee sting." As he made a paste and pressed it on his wrist I offered to find homeopathy. He shrugged. While I subscribe to it he is less inclined.
"Actually it was a wasp. There is a nest in the azalea bush. I was flinging the lawn mower cord over it and rattled them. The nest is amazing. Luckily I only got one sting. Last time it was about six, though it felt like a dozen."
I hugged him and after a bit he said it was better. Fortunately he is not allergic, as one of our sons is.
I felt sorry for his pain, and yet welcomed the chance to offer comfort. There have been a few stinging issues buzzing around recently, ones that we have disparate views on.
"Wanna see the nest?" His voice was not the timbre I have heard lately, the one that is tired. It carried the honey of excitement deeply rooted in his love for science, and discovery.
We went outside and kept our distance, but the colony had gotten back to their business of foraying into the yard and had no reason to attack us. As we stood side by side I remembered that the issues we are at odds about are not each other. They are the problems we need to solve. My mind floated back to a small children's book I made describing the way insects and birds think. Or don't.
"Does the wasp think in its little head: 'My companions and I will build ourselves a tiny house of a thin, paper-like substance, whose inside walls we will make in the form of a labyrinth. In its inmost recess we will provide a sort of meeting-place, which shall have a way in and a way out, so skillfully devised that no living creature other than one of our own family may find its way to the retreat where we assemble?' Again, does the silk-worm, while still a caterpillar,
think in its little head: 'Now is the time to prepare myself for the spinning of silk, to the end that, when the spinning is finished, I may fly abroad and sport with my companions in the air, into which I could not previously rise, and provide for myself a progeny?' "-Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity 335
It goes on to say that creatures are fully equipped with the knowledge they need to engage in the world. This is their perfection. We humans on the other hand are a blank slate, unprepared to survive. Yet that very imperfection offers us enormous potential. A freedom to change.
If a wasp is disturbed it will sting in rebuttal. But I have been given the chance to choose differently.
