Mystics with Mortgages by Elizabeth Flynn Campbell
Cockroaches and Angels
Often when something really good is about to enter our lives, something really rotten
seems to come out of nowhere. Like the time many years ago when my husband and I
moved from our miniscule New York City apartment into a relatively spacious twobedroom on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We’d been on the waiting list for the larger
apartment for years and so were overjoyed when we were told we had finally made our
way to the top of the list and could move in the next month. All went well until, on our
first day in the new place, I happened to pick up the housewarming plant my husband had
left on the windowsill as a surprise, and watched as an army of roaches swarmed out from
underneath. A quick check of every room revealed swarms everywhere: Our lovely, new
apartment overlooking the East River was infested!
We were told by the management that the new kitchen appliances, which had
been moved in weeks before, must have been infested, and that the apartment would be
exterminated and roach free within a few days -- which, mercifully, it was. We were
also told we wouldn’t be charged rent for the first month, and we were not; and this
inspired my cockroach theory of good versus evil.
The theory works like this: whenever something really wonderful is about to
happen to us, whenever we are taking a big step forward along a good path in our lives,
we can expect some kind of ominous, dark cloud to appear and seem to threaten to ruin
everything. Our challenge throughout the storm is to recognize the dark cloud for what
it is: a passing shadow that temporarily obscures the progressive movement forward that
underlies all spiritual hope.
Most spiritual traditions are rife with stories about the drama between
cockroaches and angels – that is, they all attempt to teach us about how ultimately
distracting and inconsequential cockroaches are, compared to the unceasing presence
and grace of the divine force that created the universe. And this is true even when you
can’t make the cockroaches go away—even when the cancer diagnosis comes back
positive or when you’re told you’ve lost your job. No matter the spiritual tradition, at
their most mature levels they all advise that, despite the bad news, we need not be
afraid.
My cockroach theory of good and evil started out as a joke, but in the twentyplus years since picking up that roach-infested plant, I’ve noticed that the best things
that come into my life usually do so accompanied by some loss, challenge or seeming
threat. My job then is to look for angels, so to speak, which help remind me that in the
end, nothing can separate us from the source of all love.
Reading and watching the news these days, it ‘s easy to see the cockroaches
infesting all corners of civilization and causing great suffering and fear. But maybe
they are coming out in force because we are progressing. You don’t have to have a
spiritual outlook to observe that most great movements forward tend to be met with
resistance. And if you pull back a bit from the daily news, it does seem that
civilization is moving forward, albeit in fits and starts. During destructive and chaotic
periods like the one the world is currently undergoing, I try to remind myself to look for
the abundant number of angels and plentitude of goodness that are always with us,
especially when the cockroaches seem to be gaining ground.
“Destiny is a word that originally meant following a course, as a river within its banks,
subject to modification, risking drying up, flooding at times, being replenished, but
always coursing toward an outlet in the large, tenebrous sea of the soul.” (James Hollis)
Elizabeth Flynn Campbell lives in Shelburne and is a psychoanalyst in
private practice in Burlington.