Friends at the lunch table recently asked me why the bees were dive-bombing the honey at the Campaign Kick-off in September.
We had laid out hot croissants with butter, chocolate, raspberry jam and honey from our bees with big chunks of honey comb. The bees, as they flew over the party towards the Denver Botanical Gardens dove down into the crowd to the honey on the tables. For a while I was both stunned and confused. Why were they doing this? Then it occurred to me that they were smelling the pheromones of their queens in the honey we were serving and it was drawing them down to it. Looking for the queen, they landed on the edge of the bowl and some even struggled when they fell into the honey bowls. They are biologically programmed to find their queen at all costs. We had to pour the honey out onto the grass in order to free the bees from their sticky pool.
Ever since I have been thinking about that event. Why bees are attracted to a flower’s pollen? It is because they only see white, blue and yellow. That is why the pollen is yellow? Or perhaps the bees look for and can see yellow because the center of a flower is yellow – and full of pollen.
We are programmed for God like bees are for pollen and nectar. We can smell God and feel God and sense God. We find ways to distract ourselves. We anesthetize the attraction with all manner of addictions. But we are programmed by God to find God. And we do. We find God in conversations. We find God in beautiful worship. We find God in silence and in song. We smell God in old churches and in gardens and when a chicken roasts or when chocolate melts or when lavender is harvested.
I think we make “the finding of God” harder than it is. We just need to put down our toys and inhale, listen, feel our feelings. And there, behind us at the nape of our neck is God. So we need only turn and kiss.
