Wednesday, August 19, 2020

August 19--Dare to Die?

 What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.  --Lao-Tzu

    I used to work at a church. There were all sorts of lovely banners around with profound sayings and/or Bible verses. There should have been one that said, "We've always done it that way," for that was the general mantra. Change? Oh, hell, no. That six-year work adventure that I loved really made me aware of my own resistance to change. 
    Lovely synchronicity brought me this quote this morning by Tim McMahon: "Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be call sure-thing-taking." And this quote from Richard Rohr: "Jesus was calling for a radical disruption in his religion, a great spiritual migration, and a similar disruption and migration are needed no less today in the religion that names itself after him. . . ." I'd put Jesus in the top five of historical change agents. He was totally into upsetting the order of the day. 
    Today we have rampant political corruption sabotaging our democracy and the pandemic to push us from voracious caterpillars to butterflies. Have you ever watched a caterpillar at work? Its mission is to eat, eat, eat, oblivious to the damage caused to the plant that supports it. We humans have been materialistic consumers focused on lack, grabbing all we could for ourselves, and oblivious to the harm we've caused our blessed Mother Earth. It's time for the human caterpillar stage to end, to die to our old, unsustainable mode of living.
     What will the human butterfly stage look like? Each morning I pray for all the humans on the planet to be kinder to each other and to our glorious planet home. Butterflies are silent and peaceful, and they do no harm. They thrive on nature--flowers and their nectar. Each butterfly is beautiful in its own unique way.  They coexist easily with all the other creatures around them. They can soar! I do believe that we humans have this butterfly nature within us, and I'm so excited to be alive at this time in which the cocoon is opening. 
    In love,
       Leta

Butterfly Longevity Study | Pacific Science Center

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