Our Spiritual Metamorphosis Series

Our Spiritual Metamorphosis

Romans 12:2

In a world filled with sweet scents and blue sky,

Lives the gentle, uplifting butterfly,

Whose metamorphosis has this truth to teach:

Our aspirations are within our reach.

For this fluttering flyer of soaring worth

Was at one time a creature that crawled the earth.

When she climbed a plant and learned of the sky,

She looked down at the earth and wondered why

Her destiny was to live on the land.

Something inside her did not understand.

‘The sky is my home,’ every part of her felt

‘How could crawling be the lot I’ve been dealt?’

Keeping those thoughts safe, where they could be found,

She slowly descended back to the ground.

When she found the right plant on which to rest,

She brilliantly wove a cocoon for her nest.

Inside the chrysalis, she went to sleep

Tucked in with those thoughts that she wanted to keep…

…One sunny day, the cocoon came unsealed.

Magically, a butterfly was revealed.

Seeing this miracle with my own eyes;

Of caterpillars becoming butterflies,

Bring real hope of the possibility

Of total transformation of me!

Like the caterpillar that crawls the Earth,

We are destined for a divine rebirth.

(A Poem entiled: "Metamorphosis" on a website entitled "Metamorphosis: Poems to Inspire Transformation" - written by M. Butterflies Katz [http://www.veganpoet.com/])

PRAYER

I can recall how taken back I was, in my fourth grade science class, when I first became aware of this almost magical phenomena of an ugly, old caterpillar becoming a beautiful butterfly. Of course at that age I had a very hard time understanding the whole biological time-clock thing and more so a greater problem pronouncing the word by which this natural process was know: “metamorphosis.”

Miss Black had taken an old ten gallon fish tank that had a crack in the bottom and with the class’ assistance turned it into a wonderful display of natural beauty. As we went through the various steps of this project in the biological sciences there seemed very little I picked up of Miss Black’s hints of “metamorphosis.” Inside the tank we had placed a little potting soil, various grasses and plant life. Then the surprise: Miss Black introduced us to “Gloria” the caterpillar.

Gloria arrived in a small Tupperware container that Miss Black apparently had brought from her kitchen at home. On top was a piece of cheese cloth held in place by a large rubber band. Once she had removed this covering she gently reached into the container and brought out her little friend. She then invited each row to come forward to get a closer look.

“What an ugly caterpillar,” I thought to myself.

As I looked around the group that had accompanied me I could immediately tell they must have the same thought. A few of their faces were all scrunched up. Others had lifted their eye brows high on their foreheads. And one of the girls had actually covered her eyes with her hands.

After the entire class had had the opportunity to view Gloria’s somewhat horrific looks, Miss Black stepped over to the side table where the old fish tank turned natural habitat set. She then graciously placed Gloria on one of the broad leaves of a plant. Gloria seemed to like her new surroundings. She immediately began to crawl down the leaf and onto the stem and on to the grass below.

Over the next few days we had the responsibility to check on Gloria and then to write in a journal what we had seen. Miss Black had also instructed us to be sure to jot down anything unusual that we might see. After several days of just seeing Gloria eat the foliage and crawling around all over the grasses and plants, as few of us seemed to be getting bored with the whole thing. What else does a caterpillar do? After all that is all it seems to want to do – eat, crawl, eat crawl, eat, and crawl.

At the end of that week most of us were getting a little restless about our science project and really didn’t think a whole lot about Gloria. Before leaving school on Friday I had gone over to the cage and could see that Gloria was moving a little slower than usual and was beginning to crawl up a dry stick we had placed in one corner of the tank. She climbed up slowly and seemed to be inspecting every little bump and crag. I returned quickly to my desk and made an entry in my journal of what I had seen.

Over the weekend I was way too busy riding my homemade skateboard and playing a few games of marbles with the neighborhood guys. I don’t recall thinking too much about Gloria that weekend at all. After all, play-time was way more important than some old school science project. Who’d want to think about school work on a weekend anyway?