like the wick of a burning candle; o, beloved, be like that to me.
My first thought: “Would someone let that mouse out of the plastic bag?”
My second thought: “Wait, what the hell?”
I looked at my clock. 5:07am. Squinting into the pre-dawn lit space of my room, I searched for the origin of the scuttling sound. A blurry shadow came out from behind my window’s blinds and the pitter-patter momentarily ceased.
Stinkin’ miller moths, I thought, getting quietly out of bed so as not to wake my visiting cousin, passed out on the opposite side of the mattress. I stood at the foot of my bed and stared inquisitively at the ceiling above me. Without my glasses, I could barely make out the little moth’s shape.
I opened my bedroom door and visually invited the moth to exit stage left. He did not seem interested, so I assumed he had fallen asleep. I hoped that meant maybe I could, too, so I crawled back into bed and relaxed back under my comforter.
Moments later, the rat-a-tatting began again. Stifling an audible sigh, I cracked open my eyes and used my index fingers to pull the outer edges of my eyelids towards my temples to increase my vision. I finally got a visual confirmation on the location of the moth. He was no longer throwing himself into the glow of the window, rather into where the increasing light was reflecting off my glossy white ceiling.
Tap. F-f-f-flutter tap. Tap tap. Tap.
I rolled back out of bed and in a haze, grabbed one of my yoga bolsters. I stood on my tiptoes, trying unsuccessfully to herd the moth out of my room.
My cousin shifted in bed. “What are you dooooooooing??” she asked, peering at me in my favorite up-to-the-belly-button underwear and men’s tank top, waving a bolster over my head in silence at 5:21am.
“Moth,” I replied, giggling at my own absurdity. “He’s not even going for the source of light. He’s just throwing himself at the reflection on the ceiling.”
There are a million poetic references of leading a moth to the flame. This is not one of them: When I was in high school, we had one particularly moth-infested spring at my parents’ house. We would sit in darkness at night with candles lit near bowls of soapy water. The reflection of the flame on the bubbles would lure the moth near until it would splash down into the water and eventually drown in a mirage of its own desire.
What is it that tirelessly draws them to anything that exudes or reflects light? Just like a moth to the flame – or, better yet, one who bumps up against a window in search of the freedom to fly closer and closer to the light – we all desire that union with love.
We seek and search for love in all things, but you can only bump up against so many mirrors of divine love’s reflection until you realize that there’s something more. If you are finding love in so many different places – love that looks the same, makes you feel the same – then there must be a wellspring of that love. All light is reflective of the greatest light; the sun. The trip to the sun is not an easy one. It is dangerous, hot and far, far away, especially for a moth. But by not limiting itself to just a lightbulb, just a candle or just a reflection, look at the infinite freedom the moth gives itself. How by seeing the light on a more broad scope, it can see all the millions of different places light can possibly be reflected from.
And look at how much less irritating it would be for us all.
Look, just because I love love, I crave love, I desire love, doesn’t mean I should repeatedly throw myself into the closest thing that appears to be love. It limits my expression, my ability to see love elsewhere.
I bang my head against walls because one-upon-a-time I saw love in this relationship or in that friendship or in that one pair of really great jeans and all I want is to feel that way again within that relationship/friendship/pair of jeans. But what if instead, I recognized the ability of that relationship to have reflected love, that my friendship was of love and that I experienced love when I slid into those jeans – and yet those experiences were not Love itself??
The light from the sunrise poured light into my room and the moth saw it reflected on the ceiling. But I saw instead darkness fading.
Love moves through everything. Bathes everything within it, like the golden glow of a sunrise. Infuses everything. But love is not just one person. Not just one home. Not just one opportunity. Love is a million sunrises, over and over again. And when the sun sets at night, just because you don’t feel its warmth pouring over you doesn’t mean that its light has gone out.