Dragonfly

I took this picture today while a dragonfly sat on my beach chair.  Watching him prompted these thoughts: 

In the New Testament, Peter calls the Word milk. This makes sense. Milk nourishes our bodies and strengthens our bones. Likewise, the Word bolsters the structure of our souls, the very basic fibers of our beings. In John 4, however, Jesus says that the spring welling up inside of every believer is a fountain of water. As I understand it, about 60% of a human being is made of water. Without it we’d be a pile of bones and dry flaky skin. With it we breath, skip, and run. With it we swallow, sweat, and cry. It quenches our thirst, offers a visible sign of exertion as it glistens on our skin. And it manifests one of the most recognizable signs of emotion, the teardrop.


I was surrounded by water earlier today. Dad and I spent the morning and early afternoon on the beach at Tom’s River. We ventured out beyond the breaking waves to where we could rise and fall gently on the swells of sea water. And then it began to rain. I marveled at the thousand tiny pock marks in the surface of the ocean. Water below me, enveloping me, and falling from above onto me. The undercurrents grew colder while the rain remained warm. I’d never been swimming in the ocean when it rained. What a beautiful slate grey sky.

Back on the beach I soaked up the sun, felt the caress of the breeze, and drank in the words of a well-written novel. I could have stayed. Dad and I planned to head to a seafood restaurant for dinner, so we started to pack up mid-afternoon. Just as we did so, a dragonfly glided quickly towards my leg and landed on the cuff of my shorts. The dragonfly is my favorite insect. It has been since I was little. I grew up spending time at the family cottage each summer, and the creek always hummed with the sound of dragonfly wings. I watched them hover, dip down toward the water, and glint colorful hues in the sunshine. Today at the beach, the brown and yellow dragonfly with spider web wings did something rather unusual. It stayed. I can envision a dragonfly resting on a rock or blade of grass, but not on a human being. I sat, stared, moved my eyes closer. We looked at each other, me with my brown eyes, him with his giant glassy bug eyes. When I stood, he flew away tentatively, not far, and landed on our pink and yellow beach chair, giving Dad and I more time to photograph him and contemplate his beauty.

Last year I googled dragonfly in an attempt to learn about the insect. I was in the midst of choosing a new journal and I’d found one in blue leather with a dragonfly imprinted on the cover. I no longer remember the websites my search resulted in, but I do remember that while in some cultures dragonflies symbolize death and in others strength and hope, what has remained with me is the Navajo belief that dragonflies represent pure water. This knowledge came at a time when I was first learning what it means to have the Spirit of God, a spring of living water, welling up inside me, what it means to quench my thirst at that spring, to cry its tears, to feel its life flowing through my veins.

I thought of these things today as the dragonfly sat on my knee after I swam in the rain-bathed ocean. I thought of the water that courses through my body, the living water that courses through my soul.