The Renaissance of the Butterfly and the Human Spirit

    Quoth Erasmus, in contemplating the role of free will, “If you keep thinking about what you want to do, or what you hope to do, you don’t do it and it won’t happen.”

    I find something very reassuring in the fact that God can create a butterfly out of a caterpillar. Think about it for a minute. There’s this squiggly, ugly, hairy thing—very unattractive in form and outward appearance—that wraps itself up, goes to sleep for awhile, and poof! Magical transformation, right? Wrong, at least on some counts. The actual science behind it is a bit more…well, messy, shall we say. Sparing the details, the point is that the potential contained in that ugly caterpillar is not something we can easily recognize, no matter how closely we examine it. Aren’t humans much the same? There is a spark of the divine wrapped inside, and it may be necessary to shed some things, dissolve some others, and rebuild from the basics to regenerate and grow into what we can become. We become through a process.

    Erasmus had no priest at his bedside when he died, perhaps because he was able to intuit that if the inner man wasn’t aligned with God and His purpose for him, any outward manifestation wouldn’t matter. His relationship with God was a private matter; it was not dependent on a priest or a facilitator. It makes me pause and wonder what miracles of growth we miss by being passive, rather than being an active participant in our own lives? Humanism in the Renaissance period focused on the potential and value of the individual. Do we see ourselves more collectively than individually; do we become what others say we are, rather than what we feel we are, or should be?

    Can we become more than the caterpillar who spends most of his life ingesting material in a frenzy to survive and then wraps himself up in self-preservation? They may be necessary steps in his progression, but they are only that—steps. As we reflected in our “salon” conversation, it is the application of what we know that matters. Exploration is necessary--even desirable--in life. What strengths can we uncover through testing and trying? Why do we fear reaching beyond the known? Life has its mud puddle and rainstorm days; it gets messy. Mistakes aren’t generally fatal, although we often regard them as such.

    For all of his dogged, focused determination to foster reform and change, combined with a seemingly uncompromising attitude, Martin Luther has been quoted as saying, “If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.” I agree! I know of no other way to survive—to enjoy—life than by employing what I call “battle humor.” I am happiest when I can laugh at myself and not take offense when others laugh with me. I am evolution in front of your eyes. The master isn’t finished with me yet; I am still finding my wings.