Dragonflies

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian Tradition. It is a day of celebration to reflect on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, greeted by the crowds of people who had gathered, waving palm branches to welcome him with joy. It is also known as Passion Sunday and is a day where we begin to prepare ourselves for the loss that we will experience on Good Friday when Jesus was crucified and died.

"The cross" where I spend time reflecting.

 

Each year I try to “live” this Holy Week. I attend all the church services and try to be reflective on Jesus’ life and what he brought to us.  I do this because I have been told that you can’t experience the “Easter”, the resurrection of Christ, without walking through Holy Week and experiencing the death and loss first.  It is true. We have to die before we can experience transformation of new life. Every year I expect and wait with hope for some great change in myself to happen on Easter, to be transformed in some way, but I can’t say I have experienced anything as grand as I have hoped for.

This year is different. A very mystical, spiritual leader and friend is now preparing herself and her family for her death. She is dying, way too soon, way too young, with so many gifts yet to share with us, but life is like that. There is no understanding, there can only be some form of acceptance.

I love the children’s book “Waterbugs and Dragonflies” by Doris Stickney. It tells the story of the waterbugs that live on the bottom of the pond and how every now and then one of them disappears never to return and all the little waterbugs want to know what happens. They all promise to come back and tell the others but of course when they climb to the top of the reed they are transformed into beautiful dragonflies. When they try to return they can no longer enter the pond. It is the story about life, death and life beyond death. Although it gives us no answers to the mystery of what is yet to come it gives us hope of new life.

This past fall with encouragement from my daughter, I went and a got a tattoo...and what did I choose but a dragonfly. These past couple of years I have been drawn to them more and more. They are beautiful insects with amazing abilities. The dragonfly’s agile flight and its ability to move in all six directions shows us a sense of power and poise, something that comes only with age and maturity. The dragonfly can move at an amazing 45 miles an hour, hover like a helicopter fly backwards like a hummingbird, fly straight up, down and on either side and it can do this while flapping its wings a mere 30 times a minute while houseflies need to flap their wings a 1000 times a minute. They are incredible.

This week I sent my “goodbye” to my friend, a woman who has taught me so much about my faith, who brought the feminine side of God to me and shared with me so many meaningful rituals. She has done amazing things with her life, continually learning, growing and most importantly sharing all of her knowledge, faith and experiences with everyone through her ministry, her writings and her living of life. She too is incredible. I have continued to pray for a miracle, they do happen and I need to have hope. This week, with such grace, she has begun this time of letting go, of saying goodbye to her family and friends and I too am slowly letting go. Yet because of her deep spiritual faith and life I can’t keep myself from still hoping for a miracle.

So my journey through Holy Week this year is going to be very different from every other year. Not only will I be preparing myself for the Friday of Jesus’ death, I will also be preparing myself for the grief that will come someday soon when I lose someone I have admired for years but as I prepare, I can’t give up on hope.  The dragonfly’s life is very short yet they are able to do such miraculous things in their brief life, just like my friend has. It means living each moment of life fully, completely and mindfully, making the most of every moment, of every day. It’s something we all need to do, not to waste one precious moment. I try to live a life full of experiences and adventures, to make each day count but I can’t do it without hope for something more to come, for that one miracle...whatever it may be. So I wrote to my friend the other day, telling her that maybe, just maybe that miracle will come after she has journeyed from this life to the next. Maybe she will be that one “dragonfly” that comes back in some spiritual way to let us in on this great mystery of life, of life beyond death. It may sound silly and childish, I should just let go, but I can’t, I have to continue to believe, to dream and to have hope.

A dragonfly I purchased in honour of a woman who has so deeply touched my life.