But here's the most God-like part of it...what shines is their excrement. Yep, their dung. Their poo. Their sh*t. Their waste. Waste – to me that’s the dirtiest word! It is one that haunts me. Waste. A wasted meal. A wasted dollar. A wasted day. Waste is useless, with no purpose, and no value. Waste is, well, waste.
The glowworms life span is about three days long, after six to nine months of sitting there on the ceiling as larvae. In my equation, there couldn't be more waste.
Yet fifty thousand people a year have floated through the canyon's waters that carried us through Waitomo. They paid money, put on musty, cold, torn wetsuits, jumped into freezing waters and submersed themselves underground. Here we are sporting the nasty-asty wetsuits after surrendering my bum to an inter-tube immersed in cold water so I could see the glowing … waste.
What if, in some wild trick, MY waste could shine? What if my wasted minutes, wasted dollars, wasted choices, wasted moments, were my very purpose? My most beautiful contribution? Honestly, I can't wrap my head around it. But fifty thousand of us have oohed and aahed at this dripping larvae just this year, and there was truly a magic sense of wonder as I looked at this cave ceiling, unexplored by humans for hundreds or even thousands of years, yet glowing ... what unpredictable glory.
But what about greater waste? What about wasted years, wasted lives? Can there be beauty in that? Our country just remembered one of the greatest wastes we’ve faced – 3,000 lives lost on 9/11 because of hatred. Hundreds of officers and firefighters lost because no one foresaw the buildings collapsing. Waste. Ugly, heart-wrenching waste. And not to be trivialized. But, out of that tragedy has shone some amazing snapshots of the human spirit. My favorite scene in Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” is the wide shot that spans over the snake-like line of rescue workers - because there, at the heart of darkness, hope shines. Life shines.
It does no one any good to pretend that sh*t isn’t sh*t. It is. We all have days, sometimes even whole seasons of life, that are filled with little else. No matter what we call the glowworms, at the end of the day, it’s their sh*t that’s shining.
So what’s the waste in your life right now? What is the unpredictable glory?
