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Thursday, October 23, 2014

Scenery

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It is as round as a quarter when rolled up in a ball. When it walks across the road it is the length of a broken in half Crayola crayon.

It is black and furry. Yes, furry with lots of little legs. These tiny limbs move it slowly, traveling ever so diligently in the direction only it knows.

Like us, when someone new approaches, they curl up, protecting themselves. You can hold them, but they won’t emerge right away. It takes time.

Weightless they feel, alive though they are and reminders to us to slow down, take the long road, and enjoy the scenery. It embodies patience and wisdom.

If it survives the dangerous journey, the end is a beautiful display of color. Not only color, but wings, which will stretch wide, allowing it to fly high.

The uncertainty is allegory for creativity. If you seek to be beautiful, if you seek to be transformed, if you seek to be yourself—we must go walking.

We can learn from the silence with which it walks. Though the body’s busy, the softness remains loud. It walks not only with body, but also with being.

It walks gently. It walks tenderly, reverently, while preserving the passage of time. Despite its hair-raising appearance, it walks joyfully through the day.

To this furry friend, understanding comes not in the conclusion but during the walking. Speed is not a priority. To walk on the earth is to see into the life of things.

This is a process. At times it may feel as if we know not where we are going. Other times, we see the destination in sight. We, like the caterpillar, are undergoing a transformation. What we have received is life, a gift from God. This breath is an energy that cannot be destroyed, but only altered or confined.



With this breath, like the wiggles in a caterpillar, we embark on a quest, to evolve throughout a cosmic twine. “Angelic horses, body and soul is chariot; Larvae and insects, keep planets in balance; Butterflies evolves into eternal art, and that humble caterpillar becomes infinity's canvas.”

And when it all becomes too much, when you feel as if you can’t go on: remember this: just when the caterpillar thought “I am incapable of moving,” it became a butterfly.


Of course, this transformation, this liberation, can’t occur unless we uncurl from our hesitations and stretch our legs, and walk, or crawl, with faith, toward hope…


[Pastor Adam Quine of First Presbyterian Church in Lincoln]

 

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