The Glow in the Dark Butterflies

Musings on the ordinary stuff...

Lately I’ve been thinking about “the ordinary stuff.”

A few nights ago Jack noticed the “glow-in-the-dark-butterflies” for the first time.

“Dada, dada… look at the lights on the butterflies!”

“Oh, bub, those are fireflies,” I responded, barely looking up from our evening chicken chores.

“…The butterflies are on fire!?” Jack exclaimed, partly worried and puzzled, but mostly fascinated with the lights.

“No, no, they aren’t butterflies—they are fireflies. They light up at night. Look…”

The fireflies put on a light show at our house every evening in the summer. It looks like something out of a painting. Just as nightfall is setting in the lights float out of the grass into the sky. Then, after dark, thousands more glowing lights can be seen, flickering on-and-off for hours in seeming synchrony as one’s eyes follow them first through our orchard and then down and throughout the valley.

Jack was in awe—as any sane person would be—and wanted to go to the front porch to watch them. I wanted to go to bed, but I yielded and we went out to the front porch.

By the end of the night, Jack had created an entire world out of the glow-in-the-dark butterflies. It did not matter whether I tell him how the fireflies lit up the night sky, it would not stop him from chasing his wandering imagination.

“Dada, they’re out here to keep it light for us! That’s why they’re out here, Dada.”

Watching Jack walk for the first time was special, but seeing his wondrous expression as we watched fireflies was an altogether different experience. It was sacramental. For a few minutes, the familiar monotony of my tasks had died, and out of it had arisen an enchanted world teeming with significance.

Enchantment.

What is it about adulthood that causes us to lose that sense of wonder and enchantment? What is it about the ordinary stuff that seems so hard sometimes? I love playing on the trampoline with Jack. But after the tenth game of “bring it on”—which from what I can gather is simply Jack shouting, “Bring it on!” and then charging me like a maniac—I find my mind starting to wander towards chores or work or school.

But it is extraordinary that tiny bugs light up the night sky for hours each night without burning right up—isn’t it?

Perhaps they are out there for us. Why don’t I sit out there every night? Why do I tire of the ordinary stuff?

It all reminds me of one of my favorite passages from G.K. Chesterton:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we [emphasis added].”¹

But perhaps we can train ourselves to “exult in monotony,” as Chesterton puts it. Perhaps it is a matter of formation.

The day for me is too often something to conquer and subdue. On the other hand, Jack, and most kids, I imagine, encounter the world.

Encounter isn’t passive—yet, it’s not particularly active, either. Those that encounter don’t try to subdue; they behold. It’s an act of humility.

Each and every person or thing he encounters in the world is a new adventure. He takes life as it comes to him, not thinking anything about tomorrow—in part because he has little sense of tomorrow—but always looking back to connect his few-yet-rich memories to today’s adventure. And even the smallest connections are significant.

For Jack, everything is part of a story.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the “value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores them to the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’”²

And nothing, I think, helps restores the significance of that which lies behind “the veil of familiarity” for adults as being around children. Lewis goes on:

The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it [emphasis added].³

So how do we dip our lives into story? That’s what I’m left reflecting on. I have a feeling that Jack and Samuel Bennett can help me figure it out.

1. G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy, Rockville: Serenity Publishers LLC, 52. I had to restrain myself from including a larger section (and selection) from Chesterton on this topic. Many sections from The Maniac, another essay found in Orthodoxy, could also have been included. The entire book is worth the read—you won’t regret it!

2. C.S.Lewis, “Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” in On Stories, San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017, 138.

3. Ibid.