Joy: Liturgy in "The Secret Life of Bees"

I recently screened the film, "The Secret Life of Bees" in my Liturgy class. I wanted my students to read the book by Sue Monk Kidd, but because of time constraints, I settled on the film, and read aloud the important passages that the movie leaves out.

What does a story about beekeepers in the 1960's have to do with Liturgy? 

Check out the trailer to get a better idea of the plot: Secret Life of Bees

Unfortunately, what the trailers leave out is the importance of a statue of Mary (a masthead from a shipwreck) that the "Calendar Sisters" (August, June, and May Boatright) use in their Sunday services. They recite the rosary, gather for liturgy on Sundays, and pray through the intercession of the Black Madonna (a tradition from Africa and Europe in the Black Madonna of Czestochowa). The sisters even have the image of the Black Madonna on their honey jars. It is within the sisterhood of these women and their love for one another that Lily and Rosaleen find the strength and confidence to become who God created them to be.

I think one of the reasons why the book and movie resonate with me is because I feel that the themes of surprise, friendship, sisterhood, race relations, the need to be loved, the human desire to gather and worship, the adaptation of tradition, and yearning to belong are such a part of who we are as creations of God. I assigned a paper (SWA: Short Writing Assignment) for my students to reflect on the images of the liturgies, rituals, and examples of love and sisterhood in the film. They were due today, but a few had computer issues, so I'm waiting to read them all at once. I'm really looking forward to reading their assignments-- they're so good at observing and writing about what interests them.

For the "Calendar Sisters," Mary becomes a strong, confident, powerful mother figure-- a source of strength and patronage for her daughters. They touch her statue, hug it, cry on it, and sing to it. In the book, they even anoint it with honey on the Feast of the Assumption. They cling to Mother Mary just as May (one of the sisters with a background of hurt) clings to her Wailing Wall in the back of the house. Taken from the tradition of the Jewish Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, it is May's safe-haven and place for her to pray over her grief.  The rituals presented in both the book and film remind me to embrace my humanity by not denying emotions, but by finding healthy ways to honor them.

One of my favorite lines from the movie (and I've even posted it in my Facebook profile) is spoken by August to Lily. The first time that August takes her out to the beehives, she tells Lily to not be afraid of the bees-- just to send them love. She explains, "Every living thing wants to be loved."  Love and harmony seem to be one of the central themes of the film: there are examples of selfless love and hospitality, but there are also examples of how love can become possessive, selfish, and ugly. Maybe it's generally "TWO" to talk about love, but I know that during the past two years of my life, I have felt so much love and acceptance by those around me. In particular, I've felt the love of God with an intensity that I never had before. It is so true-- we all need love and acceptance. Most of all, we need to love ourselves: it is only in encountering our true selves we come to know God. More than that, only the Spirit can help us within the struggle to know our true selves. 


In the preview, there is a scene where Lily says to Rosaleen: "I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be. I really do. I just need time to figure out why." I feel that way many times. Right now, I don't know what I'm going to do after the next two years at Villanova University, earning a MA in Theology and Certification in Lay Ministry. But I know that's where I need to be. Figuring out why will come soon enough. --- And sometimes it's not in the question "Why?" that we find the answers: it is found after asking "Where is God in this?"