Time to Swarm

"The bees have swarmed again," I told Seda.
"What? How do you know?" she asked, incredulous.
"Because I looked into the backyard just as they left the Naboo hive. I watched them circle and drift upward, over the fence, and into the neighbor's tree."
"But, that's impossible!" she cried. "I just added a new box to the hive so they would have more room a week and a half ago!"
"Yes, but they had already built a new queen cell. She has been gestating since before you added the box, and when she hatched, they were ready and flew."


The human heart is not so unlike a colony of bees. The time to take flight intuitively known, kept secret and nurtured deep within to gestate into manifestation. Time to leave home as a young adult. Time to leave a job, a career. Time to leave a lover.

The whys and why nots of leaving shift across the landscape of our day as other parts of the heart, the colony, continue the work of the moment. But the egg has been laid. It is only (plus however much more) a matter of time.

We are often impatient. We know the egg has been laid. We wonder why and whether the wait. The gestation period as mysterious as all the inner workings of our hearts, set by some internal clock that sounds the alarm loud and clear on the day of departure. When will we be called to fly? How much more honey shall we bring to this hive?

Our work is our work is our work. Whether in this hive or the next, our efforts in this world are seamless. I doubt the bees waste their time in wondering. The growing up, the growing old, the growing present goes on and on.

And this I pray: that departures may be peaceable whether I am going or letting go. That I may stretch forth my arms to the sky as I did the day I saw that swarm depart and declare my letting go a gift to the world, so many efforts in nurturing sent forth to grow and prosper as they may.