Winged Gift

The story of the hungry caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly is one of the many renewal symbols associated with spring. Most of us learned as children how the caterpillar eats and eats, then spins a cocoon in which it completely reassembles itself into a winged insect. The enormous effort required for that to happen often goes unappreciated. Even though the world is built on change, if it isn't happening directly to us, sometimes it is hard to comprehend the effort growth requires.

This past winter I got to see where vast numbers of monarch butterflies migrate to in Mexico. It was an incredible experience to witness what is estimated at 100 million of them clinging in huge clusters to the fir trees, fluttering in the air, landing on you and everything around you. Harder still to see the countless numbers of them littering the ground having fallen prey to birds and exhaustion or who knows what, as a result of their long exhausting journey to the cool mountain forests. Not all monarchs migrate and naturalists are still trying to understand why such large portions of them do. Mexico protects their migratory sites and carefully regulates access. After being there, I was so grateful that they do. In a world anesthetized at times by the constant stream of new technical wonders, it seems essential to protect what reminds us we are not the original wonder source.

Standing there that beautiful sunny day, I thought of how easily I had dismissed the powerful metaphor wrapped in the cocoon of the waiting caterpillar. Letting go of how we used to be, what we know is no longer true for us, or needs to be renewed, is easier to talk about than to do. Growth is not for the faint hearted . It requires appetite and persistence, patience and trust- especially when facing a decision that requires a journey with a mysterious outcome. The beauty of what I saw that day moved me to tears. Not only because it felt so good to know there were places where the abundance and rhythm of the natural world still existed but because seeing how a living thing, apparently so fragile, could launch off in the face of terrible odds and hardship in order to fulfill what it needed to be- seeing that gave me a gift that applies to all our equally fragile lives. It filled me with hope.