Dear Beekeeper,
What do the bees say about starting over… yet again? Perhaps i ask this because I often receive this question too from those I care for and sometimes wonder how to answer. Perhaps it’s because right now, the journey of starting again this time around feels particular filled with grief and exhaustion.
If you had asked me 8 months ago how I was, my answer would have been “doing amazing”. Yet in these last 8 months that has completely disappeared. I have experienced the departure of a mentor figure of mine, the loss of my beloved fur friend and said goodbye to the community of faith that has held me through my seminary experience… and I graduated seminary. This life transition should feel exciting and in some ways it has yet in many ways the life I am stepping into feels more like the desert than an abundant forest that people keep saying I’m heading into.
My life in a way has been a journey of starting over and over again, this feels not entirely new. I have moved time and time again, transitioned in the middle of programs, even my own identity and I know in my future that there will be similar moments for the vocation of my life, both personal and for the people I will walk with. At the same time this starting over feels particularly exhausting and painful. I am holding the grief of what was and the dreams of what is yet to be.
Sure, I know that there are many parts of me are foundational that remain the same, the love for music I carry, my belief and trust in God, the experiences and skills I have built over the years, the understanding of the basic steps I need to reach for. But now I enter into this new place in my life, being called to continue to care for those around me especially this summer at the same time feeling like I’m having to build a whole new house in the wilderness. I wonder how can I offer hope when the ways in which I have built a ministry of hope with God lay in burnt pieces all around me and the relationships I built this identity and call with have scattered? How do we show up for Gods people who are rebuilding when we too are doing the same? How do bees respond when all they built has fallen apart and there is no other option but to start a new?
Sincerely
Starting Yet Again
Dear Starting Yet Again,
I remember when I left the first church I was called to serve. My heart ached— especially for the kids I got to love. I missed them, and I was going to miss all these special moments that I’d spent years anticipating and holding alongside them and their families as they moved on… without me. I ached for the micro revelations that I got the grace to witness as people met each other, and met God through each other. I ached for the sweetness of community, but also… I knew that I had to go.
Honeybees do not pause before they swarm. There are signs, if you are trained to spot them: filled queen cups, overcrowding in the hive, and no more room to lay eggs. But swarms are how bees reproduce collectively. There’s a cognitive switch in looking towards the bees, Starting Yet Again. It’s a loosening of the mind past the individuals of each honeybee, and towards the hive. It’s not about how one bee can forage pollen, return laden, and live her life fully. It’s about the organism of the hive itself, buzzing with energy, pulsing with possibility, and full to the brim with sweetness.
When a hive swarms, the queen and her attendants get louder, they swirl in a tornado-like pattern of movement, searching for a nearby place to land, cluster, and take a beat before finding another safe place to start building again. I saw it happen, once.
It was terrifying.
You may actually be surprised to know that I am not actually a great beekeeper. I’m just persistent. I keep learning and growing, but there are so many spectacular ways to muck it up. In this instance; I didn’t recognize it for the swarm it was until much later. I was more in the mindset of WHAT ARE THEY DOING AND WHY ARE THEY ON MY CAR AND OH MY GOD PLEASE DON’T STING ME QUICK BUTTON IT UP AND CLOSE THE HIVE AND GET OUT OF HERE.
For the honeybees, though, they had been trying to tell me that they needed to move on, and I missed the signs. Now I know that I could have added another honey super (those are those boxes in a square Langstroth hive) and it might have prevented the swarm. Or not.
Either way, though, moving on is in their genes. It’s how they survive. It’s how they make more bees. Because ideally, the remnant would keep going. Smaller, at first, with a brand new queen hatching from those queen cells left behind, and then building up again. This is how we leave, Starting Yet Again… by holding the faith that God is with those whom we’ve left, as well. On the other side of a swarm there are TWO hives, each buzzing into their sweet communities.
I often think about the co-workers of the Way of the early church. Phoebe, Prisca (Priscilla), Euodia, Synthyche, Clement, Timothy, and so many more. They are often addressed by the letters of the Epistles, or carrying those early proclamations place to place as the early believers figured out how they might organize themselves and their beliefs. They started over, again and again. The community itself shaped, and re-shaped, who and how they’d be together based on the migrations of believers, and the people who chose to join in and help interpret the Way Jesus pointed.
For you, Starting Yet Again, you’re moving on, too. Whether by choice or circumstance, you’re on the cusp of something, clinging to the branch (or the car…) surrounded by the faith of those who have come before, and those beside you in the work, and setting up to build over. Take the pause point, the resting place in the exhaustion, and then move when you are ready. Being exhausted does not disqualify you from beeing, though. A hive is still a hive when it’s in the air. Movement is the condition of how we do this kind of work, not an inhibitor to it. It is because we are able to breathe, shift, move, settle that we can carry what we bring from one place to the next. Once you’ve found the place, it’s back to the foundation work. Building combs of wax, and setting up the layers of presence, all done with the faith that it’s about the communities themselves, and you as a part of them.
There’s such a radical faith offering, there, Starting Yet Again. I know the people that I used to accompany as a pastor have moved on. I know that their lives continued to grow and change and meet each other and meet God without me, as it should be! I know that in some places, I was a catalyst, and in other places, I was an inhibitor to growth. My particular skills didn’t match everyone in the same way, and the beauty of the swarm is that by leaving, there is room for another to come. God did what they could, through me. And I have to believe that God had more to do in those communities beyond me, as an individual.
So go with the swarm, sweetheart, and have faith that a hive will hold and have you as you start over, yet again. There will be pollen. There will be honey. There will be wax, again, holding you steady as you (and the community) build a new world.
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! 🐝