Firefly, Fireflies, Fireflies, and Fireflies

Tonight I watched the first episode of Firefly with a friend, and it had this exchange:

Mal: I had a good day.

Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals, and savages; half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself; and you're harboring known fugitives.

Mal: We're still flying.

Simon: That's not much.

Mal: It's enough.

Struck down, but not destroyed. Still flying. It's enough.

After I drove home, I sat in my car and watched fireflies outside and listened to the first few tracks of the Sara Groves album Fireflies and Songs, and in the title song there is this verse:

We're looking for a firefly

Moving through the night

Staring at that one place

Swear it never lights

Three ways to watch fireflies: 1) staring at one place and finding the firefly has moved on; 2) following one firefly and catching the times it lights; 3) trying to see everything in front of you at once. The firefly moves, and goes dark, but is never alone.

Years ago I wrote a poem called "Fireflies" that goes like this:

Firefly glints in the night—

beauty and longing,

joy and urgency meet

and mingle and this

is and is not

where I most want to be,

most of all places.

I too live a firefly life

here in the night,

striving for greater brilliance,

greater intensity,

sustained in my dark times by

the lights of others,

knowing that after

the final flicker into obscurity comes

the consummation,

for which all beauties

are a preparation.

Someday—the day my dad knows now that he has passed beyond the grip of time into the eternal now of God—the lights won't keep going out. "Someday," as C.S. Lewis wrote, "God willing, we will get in."

Fireflies remind me.