When Fools Screw Around

During my sermon last week, I had an entertaining bit of call-and-response with my congregation.  As I noted the essential Goodness of God's work in creation, a congregant saucily responded that mosquitoes were a notable exception.  I agreed, of course, as I loathe skeeters.  Only rarely do I feel moved to show them mercy, and even then I'm only inclined to spare the harmless, pollinating males. Beyond the pleasure of serving a little church where sermons can include some dialogue, that exchange was a useful reminder that creation is both very good and often more than a little unforgiving.  

If we human beings are wise, we take every necessary step to ensure that we aren't sickened or devoured by life, particularly those forms of life that find us appetizing.   Only fools traipse through the world imagining it doesn't want to eat them.  

Where, for example, do we find the Goodness in something like the New World Screwworm?

Screwworms are only worms in their larval stage, after which they flit about as a brightly colored fly.  The males are harmless pollinators, like their mosquito brothers.  The ladies?  Females of the species Cochliomyia hominivorax, on the other hand, are the farthest thing from harmless.  When they lay their eggs, they seek out a living mammal.  They find a soft spot...a wound, a cut, an orifice.  The navels of newborns, the perineum, or the flesh near the eye?  Those areas are also particularly desirable.  There they lay hundreds of eggs.  Those eggs hatch into screwworms, which then bore their way deep into the meat of any mammal, rotating as they eat, literally screwing themselves inwards.  In the process, they inflict agonizing pain and considerable damage, to the point where a severe infestation can kill a host.

Generally speaking, those unfortunate hosts are wild animals or livestock or pets.  But sometimes?  Well, sometimes the Latin name of the species is all too accurate.  Literally interpreted, Cochliomyia hominivorax means SpiralFly ManEater.  It'll infest infants, it'll infest the elderly, it'll infest anything with warm blood, which we have.

Humans generally don't like getting slowly eaten alive, and in the last century, science and agriculture combined forces to eradicate the New World Screwworm from the United States.  Our approach took advantage of an amusingly ironic screwworm weakness: the female screwworm fly can only screw once, after which it retains the sperm of the male within itself to fertilize its eggs for the remainder of its life.   Knowing this, we bred sterile male screwworm flies by the hundreds of millions.  When they mated with females, the union resulted in no offspring...and the species collapsed.

To keep it suppressed, all we needed to do was to continue monitoring screwworm fly populations, both in the United States and...importantly...across the border to our South.  That, and because flies can fly, we needed to support our Mexican and Central American neighbors in their efforts to keep that parasite from recurring.

There was just such a screwworm resurgence in Central America in 2022 and 2023, which...not being led by complete morons at the time...America dedicated substantial resources to help defeat.

But in March of 2025, America's emergency international support for Central American and Mexican screwworm monitoring and suppression was eliminated.  That wasn't our problem, or so the DOGE Bros and their algorithms insisted.  Why send our Borrowed Dollars to foreigners?   Cut cut cut!  

Among all of those blindly applied cuts, this one stuck in my memory.  First, because it had a powerful element of writhing body horror.  And second, because it was so damnably and obviously shortsighted.  Golly, what might happen next?

The infestation in that region worsened, and by August of 2025, with the parasite spreading northward through Mexico, it was clear it was going to breach our southern border.  Flies can fly over walls, after all.

We've scrambled to ramp up sterile male fly dispersal in the US, with nearly four million released weekly along the border, and begun doing the same in Mexico.  Anticipating that boundary being breached, The USDA initiated emergency construction on a new sterile male screwworm production facility in August of 2025, but it's not going to be done until 2027.

Yesterday, the first case of screwworm infestation in sixty years was reported in Texas.    Back before they were eradicated, those flies could spread all the way up to the Canadian border in a hot year.

So that's where we are now.  Who could have predicted it?  Golly.

For a moment, though, let's return to the question of goodness in creation.  A screwfly is a horror, sure, but is it any more horrific than an industrial pig farm?  It's a mindless nothing, as incapable of malice as an earthquake or a forest fire.  It simply exists, and those mortal beings blessed by sentience can find ways to prevent it from doing harm.  In those efforts, and in the blessings of compassion and wisdom, we can find a hint of grace.

Unless, of course, we become so lost in the echo chambers of our ideology and egocentrism that we fail to see the good path before us.  

Rock Stone Pond

One of the most striking things about my recent cruise through the gorgeous blue waters of the Caribbean was a new presence in the region.

I noticed it first when we arrived in Georgetown, capital city of the Cayman Islands.  It was a rainy day, as wave after wave of heavy tropical squalls dosed all who ventured ashore on the tenders.  Georgetown was neat as a pin and orderly, reflective of the status of Grand Cayman as a financial haven.  The buildings and roads were well maintained, the cars mostly new or late model.  Being a bit of a car obsessive, I noticed those most of all.  There were countless Hondas, particularly Honda Fits, tiny little practical hatchbacks that we no longer can buy in the United States because we 'Muricans like burning guzzoline.  

The Fits were all the newer version, meaning they run a hybrid drivetrain, getting 55 mpg-plus on an island where gas runs about six US dollars per gallon.  

But there were other cars, cars I'd never personally seen.  Like, say, this one, a sleek modern SUV:

It's a Changan, meaning it's Chinese.   There were all sorts of similar Chinese brands puttering about in Georgetown, which marks a shift from six years ago, the last time I came through the Caribbean.  Six years ago, there weren't any.  Now?  Chinese vehicles are everywhere.  Chinese tourists are also everywhere in the region, taking pictures and spending money.  

Later in the trip, during our stop in Belize, Rache and I had lunch at a little riverside cafe, where I sampled a local beer and watched iguanas fighting and mating near the outdoor dining area.   After eating, I wandered around the grounds, where I encountered a little motorcycle that had been left running.  

It was a cop bike, emblazoned with the insignia of the local police force.  The cop, who'd stopped for lunch, came back bearing a takeout bag, and we chatted bikes for a bit.  "What is it?" I asked.  

"It's a one fifty.  It's Chinese," he said.  

After lunch, Rache and I piled into a bus, and for twenty minutes rattled along some moderately maintained roads.   Our goal: Altun Ha, a ruined Mayan temple complex.  In the Mayan language, the name of the complex means "Rock Stone Pond," reflecting the name of a nearby watersouce.  It was gorgeous, and clearly a source of pride for the Belizeans who gave us a tour through painstakingly restored and reconstructed buildings.  

The tiered structures stood stark against the sky, arranged with sacred intent around a reminder of a proud and ancient culture that fell prey to ecological changes and the aggressive incursions of another, more technologically sophisticated society.

Near the entrance to the temple complex was a concrete marker.  It memorialized the archaeological efforts that had surfaced this monument to the  history of the region.  The decades-old stone upon which it had been carved was beginning to fade and wear with time, but the words upon it were clear:

"ALTUN HA.  Work at this site was made possible through the joint efforts of the Government of Belize and USAID."

One wonders, as those proud ancient Americans withered away, if they recognized the signs that marked the end of their greatness.

Do we?

Stewardship in a Time of Collapse

As it so happened, the Sunday immediately following the election was a Sunday I was preaching on stewardship.

Meaning, I was talking dollars and cents, and what lies ahead on that front for my little congregation. Poolesville Presbyterian is a church in a company town.  Meaning, it's a town with one major employer, upon which the edifice of the entire economy rests.

That "company town" isn't Poolesville itself, which is a good-hearted little Mayberry-esque place in the heart of an exurban agricultural reserve.  The company town is the entire region, and the heart of the regional economy is the Federal government.   The ten-fold growth in the population of Poolesville since 1960?  That's an artifact of the post-WW2 growth of the Federal government.  There's still growth. As I pulled into town today for my office hours, I saw they'd finally broken ground on a new development, one that's been in the works for years.  New homes, starting in the low $800s!  Because we've been fat and happy here, for quite a while.

Folks who work for the Fed are everywhere, as are contractors and subcons and the various businesses that have sprung up to support and sustain the government.  Every plumber, grocer, electrician and general contractor in the area derives their business from that income.  As does every restaurant, every private school, and the tax base for the regional governments.  

When I asked those gathered, "on what employer does the entire regional economy rely," there was a nodding Quaker-esque consensus.  Every single soul knew the answer to that question.

This was my sermon illustration, when talking about the future financial health of our church on the Sunday after the election.

Meaning, while I wasn't bellowing, (I am Presbyterian, after all) it was a five-alarm-fire air-raid-klaxon Nostromo-self-destruct-activated sort of sermon.  I didn't need to shout.  Not being fools or idiots, we know what that means.

The fat part of the probability distribution curve points to hardship in the region.  If these next four years track the way this administration wants them to track, we're not talking 2006 downturn hardship.  We're talking Flint, Michigan levels of hardship.  

There'll be a mad scramble to make it work.  Then bankruptcies. Then worthless and unsellable homes left to rot by owners who can no longer afford their Mariana-trench-underwater mortgages.  Banks, collapsing.  Local government coffers gutted.  Strip malls and businesses and office towers looking like sets from The Last of Us, only without quite so many zombies.  

Fun times.

As a church that cares for those who are food insecure, it means more hungry and anxious people...at the same time many of us suddenly find our livelihoods torn out from under us.  This is a probable future for my flock, and for every other congregation in the region.  It is easy to talk of stewardship when you are fat and happy.  But the seven fat years, as in the dream Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh, may well be over. 

The heart of the sermon was this: our obligation to those who hunger isn't diminished, simply because the cost of discipleship will soon be proportionally far higher.  Our duty to be a beacon of hope and grace can't be furloughed, or put on leave, or let go.  We must do as we are able, and we must interpret our ability through the lenses of our actual need.  Our "daily bread," so to speak.

If we are disciples, no matter what happens, in good times or ill, our commitment to the Way remains the same.  

Fear not, little flock.