Walking in our neighborhood late yesterday afternoon, we noticed dragonflies swarming. Pockets of them appeared in backyards and along the streets, darting, dipping, and weaving, in chaotic patterns across the sky. Looking up, we noticed how high they would fly: over trees and houses in twenties and thirties. On one stretch, we walked west toward the setting sun, their little silhouettes moving forward and backyard, up and down, with precision; as chaotic as the swarm appeared, there was clearly intention, purpose in the movements. Their dance was not random.

On queue, a text with a video appeared on our phones. It was three of our grandchildren, just a few blocks away, running around in their backyard as they followed the dragonflies, chasing them in their own chaotic way. We watched as they flailed their arms, singing and shouting with glee as they ran in circles, dancing in their own ordered chaos. The deepening shadows of their yard cast its own filter across the scene, making it seem to live in the now as well as some other nostalgic past. There was something profoundly elemental in their wonder at these creatures and the mystery of the moment.

Apparently, the magical swarming of the dragonflies is a kind of feeding frenzy that occurs during a seasonal migration. Precision is reality for these hunters as they catch their prey in 9 out of 10 tries and their “dance” reflects the pursuit of mosquitos and other flying insects. To see the dragonfly swarming is to experience the twilight of its existence as it moves from 2-5 years of life as a larvae in water through its six month lifespan as an adult. Sensing the seasons changing, the dragonflies move southward in front of the cold and their own changing season of life.

Watching the dragonflies swarm, and our grandchildren dance among them, I too felt the season changing. Earlier in the day, we celebrated the 85th birthday of Sally’s mom, Sherry. For the last 15 years, the appearance of her birthday has been bittersweet as it’s also the day before the anniversary of the fall leading to the death of her husband, Roy. In Sherry’s card, I wrote of seeing her reflection in my girls, Sally, Madison, and Macy, and the beautiful way her essence appears in their mannerisms, stories, and character. Though there are precise academic and clinical words for such things, to me it is simply a beautiful feature of divine design.

The mysterious life of the dragonfly is ordered to that great design. The chaos of its swarm turns out to be purposeful and precise. Ordered to the pattern of its life, the dragonfly moves to the rhythm of its seasons, taking them as they come, and doing what it does when it is time to do so. Living to its purpose is its good, the reality of which is true, and ultimately beautiful in its fulfillment.

The simplicity of such purpose is profound to behold. The dragonfly, like children dancing, is unencumbered by self-doubt or confusion. Its existence is clarity, and moving within the pattern of that clarity liberates it to be fully what it is. The dawn of our human lives and the twilight offer similar clarity. As children, we move to simpler patterns in unencumbered innocence, following the whimsical and the precise, as we explore the edges of our emerging faculties and their burgeoning responsibility. In our twilight, we return to simplicity as our once urgent wants and needs, retreat before the necessities bound in our limitations and the struggle to navigate them.

As we walked along, the moment reminded Sally of Longfellow’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

We spend so much time anguishing and fearing what it isn’t, what it didn’t, or what it might not, that it becomes easy to miss life’s invitation to dance. Somewhere between the dawn and the twilight, the chaos overwhelms and the simple song of life’s beautiful waltz gets lost. Longfellow goes on:

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

As I write this, a rooster crows as sunlight emerges on the horizon. Another day and the song plays on. For a moment, I’m tempted to chase the list, the tasks, the necessities I see emerging in the day. For a moment. But Longfellow has more:

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

But the temperature is 59 degrees and the cool morning air is unhurried, unburdened with anything but its own necessity. The necessity of being. Even the dance has interludes, though they are still part of the greater drama. Longfellow concludes:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

My mind wanders to my grandchildren, and to my mother-in-law. Dawn and twilight intermingle, cascading stars across the simplicity of life’s grand design and our call to dance with it. To dance within it. Is that necessity I feel or an urging to let it go? The moment passes and I’m left with the song playing across my mind, inviting me to take the floor.