Unitarian Society of New Haven
March 17, 2019
Meet the Beetle, By Jesse Greist
Years ago in the Thar Desert near the Jaisalmer Fort in Northwest India, I had a chance to ride a camel off among the giant sand dunes that mark the border between India and Pakistan. As I waited in the cool of pre-dawn, staring up at the stars that spread across the fading night sky, I found my mind drifting, filling with dreams and budding poems about the nature of the universe, and my small place within it. But those dreams and poems were abruptly interrupted when the camel I was about to ride did something totally natural. Without a second thought, it went to the bathroom, right there in the sand, right in front of me. Then, before I had a chance to say “ew” or make a joke about it to my companions, something really wild happened. Out of nowhere, a beetle appeared. It was about 3 inches long and had the most beautiful emerald green and jet black exoskeleton. The beetle wasted no time running over to what the camel had (ahem) deposited onto the sand and it jumped right up on top of it! The beetle turned around and did an amazing little dance before jumping back down. It then turned around put its hind legs up against the round smelly ball, and began to push it away across the sand, leaving a clear, almost artistic track behind, almost like a path. What a strange thing, I thought to myself: to be a creature that has no clear path forward, but leaves a perfectly sculpted one behind. Little did I know, I was quite wrong about that.
Since it was still another half hour until I was supposed to leave on my journey, I turned my attention fully to the beetle for a time, and even followed it along. I was impressed by the strength and determination it showed, but found myself even more blown away by the way it moved so confidently in a single direction, and made its way along pushing something twice its size and weight, all the while moving completely in reverse, with a view only of where it had been.
In a few minutes in this service, the adults are going to hear a poem about the connection between the stars in the galaxy and a single dung beetle, moving the way this one did. When I first heard the poem, I thought “What could the stars out in space and a tiny beetle have in common?” Then I remembered that pre-dawn morning back in the desert waiting to climb on a camel and ride.
I have many wonderful memories of that adventure. The camel ride was great. The endless dunes and distant cities have left an ocean of memories that seem to swell up when I close my eyes or find a moment to dream. Yet somehow, what never gets lost in that ocean is the tiny beetle, pushing a perfectly round ball along the sand, a ball which you or I might wrinkle our nose at, but which literally meant the difference between life and death, if not the survival of generations to that one small beetle. I now know that when I saw the beetle jump up on top and begin dancing around it was actually connecting to the stars in the night sky, using the Milky Way galaxy itself to create a map in its mind of where it needed to go. With those stars, the beetle didn’t need a path, a GPS, or any other kind of map. It found the answer by looking up. When it turned around and pushed with its hind legs, it used what nature had given to guide its way along, knowing where it was going while staring all the while back and back and further back.
So what did that beetle teach me that day? Look up, and you’ll see the map. Look down, and you’ll know where you are. Look back, and the way forward becomes clear as day, even in the dark of night.