It’s Okay To Be Caterpillar Soup (still)
There appears to be a new rhythm in my life. These mid-winter months have held some significant moments for me. Three years ago, almost to the day, we moved into our new home. We took on a mortgage, and the responsibilities of home ownership. A month later we went into Covid-19 lockdown.
In our backyard we have a cherry tree and a bay laurel perfectly positioned between one another for a hammock. My large body has always loved the way a hammock supports me. It was one of the first things we setup in our backyard when we moved in, and it became a place of comfort to me during those first few months of the lockdown.
Uncertainty was gripping all of us, and we were worried about our loved ones getting sick. I was feeling overwhelmed by all of this one day and found myself in the hammock. I asked my daughter to give me a gentle shove, and for the next 30 minutes I was cradled and slowly swayed. For those of you who have practiced meditation, you’ll know the physical sensation of melting.
In that moment I knew I could do nothing. I can’t develop a vaccine. I can’t make someone wear a mask. I can’t fix a global pandemic. The best thing I could do right now is nothing. And with that revelation I felt my shoulders drop a quarter of an inch down, and the muscles in my neck release. I said, almost in a whisper, “It is okay to be caterpillar soup.”
This was the theme of one of the first messages I shared with all of you on Zoom once we went into lockdown. I wanted all of us to know, and perhaps be prepared for, the release of control, and at the same time for us not to feel so alone in our shared cocooning.
In the hammock it felt as if the entire world was disintegrating into something unrecognizable from the thing it was before. Much like a caterpillar encapsulating itself in a chrysalis, where it essentially melts into a goo. Eventually it gets put all back together before emerging with colorful wings, and a completely new way of moving in the world.
The promise of emerging from the goo stage of transformation, knowing that the dream of being able to fly would come true, made the uncertainty of melting into a puddle okay.
I was reminded of my own line, “It is okay to be caterpillar soup” roughly ten days ago, when I unexpectedly found myself melted into a puddle of uncertainty and hopelessness. Our beloved Friend Sarai, who knew I was in this chrysalis stage once again, sent me this message, “I once heard this incredible sermon by a wise Quaker pastor, talking how it’s okay to be caterpillar soup.”
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I grew up hearing the term “born again” often. Being “born again” happened when you decided to devote your life to Jesus. It was expected that you’d be a changed person after the conversion experience. After this second birth, you’d see the world differently.
Soon being born again became less of an opportunity and more of a demand. “You must be born again.” Jesus himself said this in the gospel of John when he is speaking with Nicodemus,
“There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren’t in on it.”
Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
“How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”
Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
“So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
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I’ll admit that I thought we only turn into caterpillar soup once or twice in our lives, that we only get one shot at being born again. So, when I found myself in a puddle last week, I added in a bunch of unnecessary worry.
Why do I feel so unraveled again, right now?
And, then I realized it was early February, and perhaps my body and spirit are properly synched with the rhythms of nature. If we observe the natural world around us, we may notice how thin the world looks. Most of the trees have been reduced to their exoskeleton. And yet, when I look into my garden, I notice branches now swelling with buds. I notice the sword like shape of daffodils pushing through the hard and cold ground.
I imagine this initial growth, out of seeming death, would be slightly painful. There is a lot of breaking through hard surfaces that needs to happen before blossoming.
Maybe it wouldn’t feel so scary or disorienting if we accepted that each of us may go through this seasonal transformations.
But I think we’ve built up some cultural resistance to rhythmic dying, composting, seeding, and growth. It demands a lot of our certainty craving brains to be uncertain. So we strive for predictability . We may come to expect consistency from our Quaker community, or the people who make it up, and we feel unsettled and worried when the collective, or the individual changes.
Parker Palmer talks about these patterns of change, especially as we do the work of moving towards our truest selves and says that we can often, “lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles.”
What if, as the collective of West Hills Friends, acknowledged that being a part of this community will likely mean that we see our Friends going in and out of these goo stages of transformation many times throughout our lives together? What if we each knew that our fellow community members are expecting us to go through these metamorphosis plenty of times in our lives, and will be with us during the painful melting parts, and will celebrate the transformed version of ourselves on the other side?
We do this naturally at West Hills, but what if we named it as part of who we are? If we did that, then even new people who come to us will know that who they are the first day they visit us, is not the person they need to be next year.
The more that I do this pastoring thing, the more I see the purpose of our community to be a sort of weekly trip to the artist’s studio. A place to get in touch with our souls, a place to practice, a place to be puddles together, a place to witness other people practicing, and a place for us to learn from other people’s experiences of cyclical transformation.
I don’t get the sense that we are born again from above once in our lives when we say a special prayer, perhaps, as Jesus says, it must be a daily acknowledgment of the wind that moves between the leaves, a daily rebirth into the soul and spirit of God who is inviting us into seeing and being in the world in a different, new, and spectacular way.
Here are some queries :
What has been your experience with transformation? What did it feel like when you were in it?
How are you creating space for other people to transform?
What kind of environment aids you in transformation?