Dear Reader,
Yes, you.
I’ve been thinking about you. It’s been aching; the cognitive dissonance.
-A 250th anniversary of something many have been brainwashed for a long time to think was pure celebration, nationalism, and love of country…
…yet joining together as we watch it fall apart from the ideals that were always aspirational…
-Bring all your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… yet borders and walls and get out now; and excessive reactions to those who step in as helpers…
-A country claiming to be Christian but dismantling the systems that attend the clarion call of the Gospel to care for those who are forced into poverty without a way to access basic human needs like home, food, family, love, healthcare, belonging…
It leaves me looking around at these little apocalypses wondering for change, grasping for hope, and stretching towards possibility. These multiple realities are one of the reasons why I started this column; with love letters and honeybees and sprinkles of hope and meaning making.
Honey for the Apocalypse is a response to the pain we carry and the connection we seek. This world sure can toss a sting, swelling and itching into the discomfort of how humans can collectively fail each other. Yet, when we gather together, hum and sing and work tiny revolutions of collective care, we make sweet, sweet honey.
Honey for the Apocalypse… and it’s always an apocalypse somewhere, for someone.
It’s so easy to feel alone in this world. And, dear reader, you are not alone. There are so many of us seeking our roles, doing our best, and stretching just a bit further. I’m so glad to be in this work with you.
I’m in this work beside you because I believe that there is a role for us all, and that Christianity is ONE OF the methodologies of hope and persistence through turmoil. Not the only one, but certainly one that we are uniquely equipped to use, together. For me, it is the meaning-making in the long work ahead, and it’s a tool that connects me to those that have come before.
So using all the tools of meaning-making I have available to me, I’ll be here praying, tending to the honeybees, writing love letters, and building communities.
And, I need help! I want to invite you to help shape the places in our lives that need some love. Truly, I invite you to write in. Whether anonymously or with a name only you’ll know, I’m the only one who sees the letters; I always pray on them, and I respond publicly to most with love and grace and the patterns of the honeybees.
…about anything that matters to you: the doubt you haven’t said out loud, the grief you’re still carrying, the question you don’t know who else to ask, the relational challenge in family or circumstance…
…for weekly love letters and a touch of Honey for the Apocalypse.
I want to note that the letters I’m responding to are submitted by real people. And the responses are my own, with pictures I’ve taken of (mostly) my hives. This project is a slow launch, and an imperfect one. You see, one of the goals that I’ve held for myself this year is that I’ll just do The Thing, whatever it is; and fail in public, and own it.
Tending honeybees certainly comes with the stings. While I can wear protective equipment, they are still responding with instinct and guardianship of their hive. Stepping out to try and do This Thing weekly… I know there will be stings. And, for me... I’d rather attend to the places of pain while tentatively putting something out there than sit back safely.
What I have to offer is my words, and clarity of my work in this ongoing movement of co-creating a new world. I have honey, dear reader, and I want to share it. Not for personal gain, but for the joy of amplification of hope in a world echoing despair.
Will you join me?
Hope, even still. 💗🍯🐝
PS: Write In Here, and see you soon.
Dear Dragon,
First, let’s acknowledge that you are holding some high standards for yourself. I hear in your letter the pressure to be fully, fully known; and perhaps witnessed as one who is as she “should” be in hospitality. It IS totally all throughout the scriptures!
However, the people writing, and most of the audiences reading (until only the last 30 years or so) didn’t have internet. The public presentation of self was a mostly contained offering. And those hospitality texts we love to cite, Romans 12:13, Hebrews 13, 1 Peter 4, were written to communities under pressure, displacement, exile. The instruction to welcome strangers was issued to people who were themselves strangers. That is a different situation than you all cozied up with your cat.
Further, Jesus and his inner circle were nomadic, wandering with the Good News, and found “home” through the hospitality of strangers. Of course hospitality is everywhere in scripture. It was survival literature for people without a fixed address. It makes sense to me that the value runs so deep, especially when we collectively imagine a world where all have access to the choice of home.
And notice: the primary unit of hospitality in those texts is not the house, it’s the table. The bread. The oil. The shared meal. Many do that work through their public professions, and how they show up in community in mutual aid. You are already doing that every time you gather people in the church you serve, the communion you offer, and every time you host a potluck in your backyard.
Of course you’re not wrong to be protective of your home space.
Have you seen the inside of a honeybee hive? It’s predictable, and perfect for the bees. They create it to be what it needs to be for the overall function of the hive. Young bees make wax through special glands on their abdomens. They shape that wax by chewing it up, and then shaping it into perfect hexagonal shapes. It’s precise; exactly as it needs to be. There’s some choice about hive production there: slightly larger cells produce drones (male bees), and specially shaped cells dangle with extra room for the Queen.
A honeycomb cell functions for multiple purposes and can shift. Eggs laid within them become larvae, then emerge as honeybees. Or they fill it with honey and cap it. The cells themselves are boundaries and borders to the function of the hive. They contain everything necessary for the bees, and the integrity of each hexagonal chamber is what makes the whole structure possible.
I think about their protectiveness of their hive. Any perceived threat is going to feel it, physically, through their sting, and bees stand guard at the entrance for intruders to protect their honey horde, their young, their queen. However, when I meet the honeybees out foraging, they are so gentle. When they are on the flowers in my garden, the hospitality of pollination is so abundant! They offer tiny messages of hope and reproduction from flower to flower.
They aren’t able to pollinate if there’s no hive to bring the pollen back to. Their protected hive is the foundation of their hospitality to the bloom.
Dragon, there are many ways to be hospitable, and your assessment of your own is only applying one lens, through the most intimate part of your inner castle. It’s not a binary, sweetheart; where either you’re entirely hospitable or nothing counts at all. It’s a spectrum of care where your public facing self is hosting a hospitality of hope for all whom you encounter. It’s certainly not a control issue to want your home as you like it.
The boundaries made of your home space: the wax cells each holding a treasure telling a story for your own eyes only… this isn’t a failure of abundance, but an architecture of sustainability for the very public facing work you do with your brain, your proclamation, your internet self.
As ministry carries on, it is even more important to have places where you can let yourself just bee. Bee messy… bee hyper attentive to your space… bee cozy…
And bee hospitable to the tiny cat with whom you’ve chosen to share your home.
It’s impossible to be ALL on, ALL the time, and restoration and retreat enables you to sip from the sweet cozy honey of your den to emerge ready to pollinate all that might bloom in communities.
The last thing I’ll offer is through the lens of the Ordained Ministers’ Code of the United Church of Christ. While specific to the UCC, I do think it’s applicable in wider ways. Amongst commitments to church, community, ethical behavior, growth, and family, is the following line:
I will honor my need for time for physical and spiritual renewal, recreation, and vacation.
Dragon-in-Her-Den, your home is your spiritual renewal. Cherish it.
P.S. Dear Reader— yes you! Are you holding something close for which you might need a little honey? Then write in and and join alongside this ever-growing hive of hope and care! 🐝