The Fly

On Father’s Day morning, my eight year old granddaughter Zofia and I noticed a fly buzzing around a big picture window trying to get back outside. I opened a nearby door but fly number two entered while fly number one resisted all my efforts at redirecting him to a better world. I can more successfully relocate crawly things by maneuvering them onto a sheet of paper, racing outside, and dumping them on the edge of our property. They will likely reward my kindness by finding their way back into the house. But I can not justify depositing pestilence in someone else’s yard. I am not even a noble advocate for insects, flies, and all their assorted cousins. I just have a unilateral policy that these little critters can live as they please outside my home. If they return, I cannot guarantee their safety. Fly number one was so exhausted from his efforts to escape that he could only rest as an easy target. I left him alone while philosophizing with Zofia that I was a powerful being in the fly’s universe. I was determined to grant him a salvation that he wanted more than I did. But he was just as sure that I was the enemy imprisoning and harassing him. It was an easy leap to view humans as the flies, endlessly banging into barriers, avoiding any help from God to find the path to eternal life. My wife interrupted my homily to tell us we were going to be late for our 11:00 am church service. We resisted on the theory that we were having a spiritual breakthrough at our own Sunday service. As the higher authority, she persisted, shooed us out the door, and deposited us at an outdoor Mass.

Advertisement