DON’T LOOK BACK; SOMETHING MAY FALL OFF [T, 5-18-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

DON’T LOOK BACK; SOMETHING MAY FALL OFF   [T, 5-18-21]

 

It’s almost time for the Brood X cicadas, the ones that appear only every 17 years. They live underground for all that time, then, at the 17 year mark, when the ground gets warm enough, they appear, with their noise-maker things on the side of the body, that, for some strange reason, attracts the girl cicadas, or maybe the other way around. With cicadas, you never know who initiates good times.

The local weather people say that the ground is going to get warm this week, and that we live in the epicenter of The United States of Cicadas. Four or five other states are involved, but our climate and our trees are just what the cicadas thrive on. They like oaks and maples for partying. They think anything conifer is so last year. Or so 17-years-ago. It’s cicada party time. But that’s not all good this year for the cicadas.

Brood X should not be confused with Generation X, folks born between 1965-1980, about 65.2 million of them, the same number of cicadas that will party on the tree just outside our bedroom window, although it is possible that both Xs use the same psychedelic drugs. Gen X better hope they aren’t exactly the same, for the newspapers are reporting that when the 17-year Brood X cicadas show up this year, they will be invaded by a fungus with psychedelic properties that, to put it delicately, and I quote the local newspaper, The Herald-Times, “…will cause their butts to fall off.”

You know, you stay underground for 17 years, just biding your time, waiting for that period of a day or two when you get to go up above ground and find a mate to spend your life with, or at least party with, which is pretty much the same thing for a cicada, and then you get covid21 and your butt falls off! That is something terribly sorry about that. I mean, why can’t their noise-maker fall off—it’s the problem!

It reminds me of my first pastoral psychology class, at Garrett Theological Seminary, with Prof. Carroll Wise. He was a small, self-assured man, about whom it was said that when he preached in chapel, he always made us sing, “Immortal, invisible, God only WISE…”

He told us of the man who went to see a therapist because he had a golden screw lodged in his belly button. The therapist tried all sorts of psychology to get the man to give up his imaginary problem, but none worked. Finally, he said, “Take this golden screw driver and go home and use it to unscrew that golden screw in your navel.” He handed him an imaginary screwdriver.

The man returned the next week and the therapist asked if he had done as instructed. “Yes,” the man said, “but when I took the screw out, my butt fell off.”

So we would-be pastoral counselors learned that often folks actually need a problem, because it is holding us together. We use such problems to our advantage. As counselors, we needed first to learn what a problem was doing for the person who confided in us, before we tried to “cure” it.

I’m glad I’m not a cicada therapist.

John Robert McFarland