Crawling with resurrection

The sound of death and new life is in the air; will we crawl outside ourselves to listen?

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Friends — don’t miss this brand new commentary on Hebrews from the amazing Amy Peeler!

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Gentle reader,

Here in Chicagoland, we’re being treated to the beginning of a double brood cicada emergence; the 13 year babies and the 17 year ones are crawling out of the earth together.

People are freaking out.

I know it’s early days, but I’m loving it. These creatures are so beautiful and strange, emerging from an inexplicably long but also neatly timed underground nymph stage for a short lace-winged life in the sunshine, staying only long enough to make the next brood.

Dwight, my #theologycat is a mighty hunter, but he’s also a bit afraid of these odd creatures. He’s not alone. There’s plenty of cicada panic on my local social media feeds. The creatures are harmless, but they are plentiful and strange.

Above, the first exoskeleton I found in our yard, luminous on the viburnum. I can’t look away from that translucent shell, a perfect image of a creature now gone from my view.

Maybe people just don’t like bugs and crunchy exoskeletons, bu I wonder if some of the horror isn’t that of the graveyard, the very human horror we feel at the sting and pain of death. Maybe some of it is attached to our fear about what goes into the ground.

The last concurrent emergence of the 13 and 17 year broods was in 1803. Since that year, this earth has seen 17 generations of 13 year cicadas (13 generations of the 17 year broods), but none of those broods has walked side by side since the year Ohio became a state, a great fire rolled through Bombay, meteorites fell in France, Haiti revolted, and the U.S. Congress ratified the Louisiana purchase. There’s so much death, there, and so much apocalypse, so much land teeming with cicadas. There’s so much that seems far away but still makes us who we are, and the cicadas have been there, under our feet, the whole time. Maybe this horrifies us too: the inexplicable rush of the generations that is somehow also the slow, slow roll of time.

Their mating song is everywhere. One can’t place the direction of the singing, because it comes from every side, surround sound rolling, each human listener dead center of a song not sung for us.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” (John 12:25-26)

A (very cursory) survey of cicada inspired poetry is bleak. It’s all about creepiness with some mocking of the bugs—and of us—for living just for sex. The piece above is the only counterexample I find, thanks to a friend who posted it. (But do send me all your favorite cicada poetry, please and thank you.)

They’re beautiful.

The cicada belongs to the order Hemiptera; family, Cicadidae; genus, Tibicen, but he makes me think of the categories proper to the Mayfly: order, Ephemeroptera; family: Ephemeridae; genus:Ephemera

But we’re all ephemeroptera, aren’t we? “All flesh, like grass…” (1 Peter 1:24)

We’re so much like the cicadas, I think. We have this crazy long nymph stage before we can emerge as adults. We spend such a long time burrowing about in the dark before we peek out into the light. We sing for new life.

And this moment intrigues me: a short period of white, soft, vulnerability between breaking out of that exoskeleton and hardening into the winged adult form. The cookbooks say these soft cicadas are at their tastiest. I am not going to investigate further.

“In the radiance of His light the world is not commonplace. The very floor we stand on is a miracle of atoms whizzing about in space. The darkness of sin is clarified, and its burden shouldered. Death is robbed of its finality, trampled down by Christ’s death. In a world where everything that seems to be present is immediately past, everything in Christ is able to participate in the eternal present of God.”
― Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

“Now all things have been filled with light, both heaven and earth and those beneath the earth; so let all creation sing Christ’s rising, by which it is established.” — John of Damascus - Paschal Canon

“As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:48-49)

“For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?’

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:53-56)

Those exoskeletons make great mulch, I’m told. There are quite a few sermons in that. Help yourself to them, please.

Thanks be to the God who made all things and loves what he has made. Can we gain compassion, for ourselves and others, if we sit with these long buried nymphs, just crawling up into the sunlight? Can these crazy, annoying, beautiful creatures draw our attention? Spark us to empathy? Invite us to meditate on death and resurrection?

Thanks to Rachel Selph for sharing this song with me: “Kingfisher” by Andy Squyres:

“We go out walking in the water where the silver swims
Cicadas singing like somebody washed away their sins
I see a kingfisher ascending to his rightful throne
The meek inheriting a city they can call their own”

This little guy is practically dust already, so brittle, but he also goes back ages. Here’s a jade cicada pendant from China, the Shang dynasty, circa 1600-1050 BC!

Shared from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. … Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” (Romans 6:5, 8-10)

If you need me, I’ll be wandering around my yard, paying attention to sunlight filtered through exoskeletons.

Grace & peace,

BFJ

This piece contains associate links. Excepting the pendant, the photos in this post are my personal photos. As always, I’m grateful if you choose to subscribe, forward, or share. Want to support my work but can’t become a supporting subscriber? Buy me a coffee.

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