Butterflies and transformation
Four Europeans were discussing the poetic nature of their languages. The Englishman said, “Take the word ‘butterfly.’ It is so descriptive.” The Italian said, “Our word is ‘mariposa,’ so apt, almost musical.” The Frenchman said, “We have the best word for butterfly, ‘papillon!’ It is musical and descriptive.” The German spoke up, “Und vat ist wrong mit schmetterling?”
An American Indian legend says, “If anyone desires a wish to come true, they must first capture a butterfly and whisper that wish to it. Since a butterfly can make no sound, the butterfly can not reveal the wish to anyone but the Great Spirit who hears and sees all.”
Butterflies have often been a symbol of personal and spiritual transformation. Free spirits, they flutter about. Butterflies are the only known beings capable of changing their DNA entirely during their metamorphosis from caterpillar to adult butterfly. You could call it a rebirth.
Spiritual transformation, like the metamorphosis of the butterfly, is difficult and often painful. In order to change, to fly free, we must embrace the growing pains. Emerging from fear and darkness into the light makes us embrace the healing, growing and liberating transformation.
The fascinating life of the butterfly teaches us about our metamorphosis. The Monarch butterfly, for example, migrates to Mexico. But it is not the generation that left Mexico the previous year that returns. It takes four generations to complete the trip. Somehow the offspring of the Monarch ancestors absorb the message from their ancestors and complete the life journey as nature intended.
The parallel struck me, how my ancestors migrated from Germany to Russia in 1744, then from Russia to Canada in 1912. They too passed on their faith story, their culture and traditions through successive generations and different languages so that our developing spiritual consciousness could absorb and benefit from all that faith and tradition offer.
How is this accomplished? The butterfly teaches us much. The parent butterfly has sensors in its feet that taste the leaves to make sure their offspring have the best food. Then they lay their eggs on the leaves. The larva, pupa and butterfly stages follow.
The struggle in the life of the lowly larva teaches us more. The larva forages on leaves and plant matter, while the adult butterfly, after its painful transition from the pupa, feeds on sweet nectar and sugary delights. The food of the gods!
My parents, too, provided only the best place secure enough for me to grow, open enough for my imagination, and peaceful enough when I needed rest. I thank them for their inspiration, their example of living close to the God of their faith. Some of this turning to the Lord becomes instinctual and is inherent in all that has been passed on to me through several generations and languages.
Maybe it is species specific, this instinct for the eternal. Thornton Wilder says in Our Town, everyone knows that there is something eternal. We just seem to be always forgetting it. But tradition is alive! This force binds us so powerfully that we will fight to uphold tradition and model our lives after it.
Let me conclude with Mary Meeker’s butterfly wisdom: “When, within our souls and psyches we are made aware of a safe but insistent drum beat, repeated like butterfly wings in motion, we sense the message… that our inner self has begun its search for freedom.”
(569 words)
