Was the fly on Mike Pence's hair divine intervention?

This is a question that occurred to me as I was recording my reading of the previous post — "Was there any discussion of 'systemic racism' during the debate?," — which has a bit to say about the fly that landed and lingered on Mike Pence's hair during the debate. It made it hard to listen to what Pence was saying, which I see, reading the transcript, was trenchant and substantive. Was the fly a meaningless, random occurrence or could it have been divine intervention? 

Surely, an omnipotent deity, if He cared about the outcome of American elections, could simply cause the person he wanted to win. Why would he merely put a thumb on the scales as We the People weigh the choices? And such a tiny thumb, a little fly, so lightweight that it made no impression on the mind of Pence as it stood staunchly on the man's silvery coif! He had no idea of that thing as he burbled about respect for our earthly justice system. Yet perhaps it tipped the election. Who can know?!

But I had divine intervention on my mind after what Trump said yesterday (transcript):

Hi, perhaps you recognize me? It’s your favorite president. And I’m standing in front of the Oval Office at the White House... A short 24 hours [after receiving the drug Regeneron], I was feeling great, I wanted to get out of the hospital and that’s what I want for everybody. I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president because I feel great. I feel like perfect. So I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it. I heard about this drug. I said, “Let me take it.” It was my suggestion. I said, “Let me take it,” and it was incredible the way it worked.... You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better fast, just like I did. So again, a blessing in disguise....

I blogged that video yesterday, here, and then — because it was thematically relevant — I added video of the aged actress Jane Fonda saying "I just think COVID is God’s gift to the Left." So, people are talking about divine intervention. It's an idea that landed on my head and has been lingering — depositing eggs of ideas, one might say, to extend the metaphor. 

By the way, look what The New Yorker put in its crossword on Monday:

23 Down: "________ Jane, celebrity epithet of 1972." So many possible clues for "Hanoi." They had to want to go there. Is it, for them, just a funny old nugget of pop culture? 

Anyway, back to the question whether divine intervention could come in the form of a fly? I think of the play "The Flies" ("Les Mouches") by Jean-Paul Sartre. This is something that occurred to me as I was reading the previous post out loud, but I couldn't talk about the play off the top of my head — my almost certainly flyless head. I hadn't read it in 50 years. I had to end the recording and find some sort of recap. I'll use this, randomly:

Sartre revamped the Orestes story... by adding Zeus as an ironic and despicable character, a plague of large flies fouling the wretched city of Argos....  Clytemnestra calls it a quarantine, "a sort of pestilence" others are afraid of being infected by....

Quarantine! That resonates. At the time of the play, 1943, the idea of pestilence was associated with the Nazi occupation of France. 

Ah! Here's the whole text of the play. Excerpt:

THE TUTOR: This Argos is a nightmare city.... These charming insects.... Now leave us in peace, you buzzers. We know you like us, but we've had enough of you. . . . Where can they come from? They're as big as bumble-bees and noisy as a swarm of locusts.... 

ZEUS: They are only bluebottles, a trifle larger than usual. Fifteen years ago a mighty stench of carrion drew them to this city, and since then they've been getting fatter and fatter. Give them another fifteen years, and they'll be as big as toads.... Don't blame the gods too hastily. Must they always punish? Wouldn't it be better to use such breaches of the law to point a moral? 

ORESTES. And is that what they did? 

ZEUS: They sent the flies. 

THE TUTOR. The flies? How do the flies come in? They are a symbol....

The gods sent the flies... but what do the flies mean? Ironically, right now, a dog named Zeus is crying at me, and I have no idea what he means.  

I stopped my reading of this post into the recording that will be today's podcast. I'm hoping to get a better idea of how to bring this post in for a landing, like a tiny insect alighting on a Vice President's silvery hair. 

If God does protrude into our natural-seeming world to send messages, would he send a fly? Who can know? But I do remember that in the New Testament, when Jesus is baptized, God sends a little flying creature into the scene:

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

A dove is not a fly. But the debate was an indoor event. A dove — or any sort of bird — would have caused quite the ruckus. It certainly couldn't have landed on one of the heads — which one? — and hung out for 2 minutes. I think a fly was the right choice of small flying creature to create just the right impression. 

You know, I've read that Biblical passage many times, and I've never really thought of the bird landing on Jesus. The paintings of the baptism tend to show the bird before it alights on Jesus.

Did it land in his hair like a fly on Pence? On his shoulder like a parrot on a pirate? Did Jesus reach out his hand and make a perch of his finger like Snow White singing to a bluebird?   

  

Imagine if Pence had sung to the fly in a twittering voice like Snow's and held out his delicate fingers for the creature to alight?! 

Life is weird, but not that weird. And certainly there was no voice from Heaven saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."