The Fate of Bees

I just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery for my book club.

(Note to the girls in my book club: If you have not finished the book yet, you are a slacker and might not want to read any more.)

This New York Times bestseller alternates between the narrative of 12-year old, wealthy youth contemplating suicide and her middle-aged concierge. Both women struggle throughout the book to understand their place in life, and conflicting messages they feel humanity accepts without hesitation.

One chapter still has me thinking. Paloma starts each of her "Profound Thoughts" with a haiku:

Who presumes
To make honey
Without sharing the bee's fate?

Paloma writes: "Living, eating, reproducing, fulfilling the task for which we were born, and dying: it has no meaning, true, but that's the way things are. People are so arrogant, thinking they can coerce nature, escape their destiny of little biological things...and yet they remain so blind to the cruelty or violence of their own way of living, loving, reproducing and making war on their fellow human beings...Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there's anything divine about our animal nature. This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us. Freedom, choice, will, and so on? Chimeras. We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die."

As I finished the book, I felt really sad...because I think Muriel Barber really concludes that "we are in truth nothing but poor bees."

And when I'm honest, I have to admit that a lot of days I live with the same conclusion: my purpose in life is to find the task, finish it, and not make things complicated by wanting greater meaning. Destiny is written and I might as well submit to the way things are.

I like theology that views Jesus Christ as hope of the opposite.

If all of the Old Testament prophets were pointing to Christ, who disrupted religious people by proclaiming salvation for ALL people...symbolizing a revolution of tradition and the way things were.

Then maybe faith isn't as much about being right, as it is about believing in renewal and dreaming about change.