Becoming Something New

Photo by Andrew Claypool on Unsplash

The wondrous transformation from the caterpillar into the new life as a butterfly includes the cocooning season, where your body literally becomes mush. You disintegrate. You lose shape. You lose everything that defined you as a caterpillar. You become goo. In meaningful ways, you die to what you were.

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

But here is the miracle: inside that deathly mush are imaginal cells. These cells hold the vision of a future within them. When all seems lost and nothing that was known can be known as it was, the imaginal cells give us the vision for moving forward. They know that with the right conditions and a little time, a butterfly waits to be born.

Some of us these days, feel like mush right now. We are messy, fragile, unprotected, insecure, unrecognizable, disoriented, developing, transforming, imaginal beings. We are in that liminal space between what was and what can be. Our becoming something better on the other side of this is not guaranteed. But with the right conditions, with the awakening of people to the beauty of our planet and the intimacy of our connection to everyone and everything, we have the chance to become something new.

 If ever there was a time for us, to become the new creation that God is calling us into, it is now, and I am grateful that we are together on this journey into new life.

Photo by Doug Kelley on Unsplash