This winter has devastated my sub-tropical garden in New Orleans. I was out of town when the last polar vortex dipped down for a visit. In my absence, all of the plants that I had brought into the house during the first big freeze were left outside to melt into gelatinous puddles. The joyful exception to the sad stories in my garden is the camellia.

And I am not the only one who is excited about the flowers. The honey bees amped up their buzz big time when I snipped a few branches off to share with a friend.

I imagined for a moment that I could hear the thoughts of the cold, hungry bees.
What the #%&$#  was the large two legged doing, walking off with these precious blooms???

Perhaps the bees were buzzing nothing of the sort, but it made me think about how hard it is to celebrate the gift of abundance from a mindset of scarcity.

I recently bore witness to a white man proactively insist that the construct of systemic racism is not real, but rather slanted propaganda. That there are only individuals, no such thing as collective identities…

How deep the fear of losing the flower of privilege must be, for such loud, unsolicited buzzing.

How terrified to share what grace has provided…

Bees know the truth and the power of the collective. May we be so wise.

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Rev. Deanna Vandiver

Deanna Vandiver is a community minister in New Orleans, LA, serving as the Executive Director for the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal (http://www.celjsr.org).Since she accepted the call to ministry, she has not experienced one boring day.Good music, good food, and good friends have sustained her through heck and high water and she has a practice of gratitude for the wonders of this life.

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