The absolute beauty of Mother Nature is undeniable. Her majesty and scope are breathtaking, but she has a gnarly underbelly. This thorny realm is intertwined with and feeds the beauty that we see.
“Blue Bird Story” on its face is a “pretty picture”. Will the bird have a meal or will the moth fly free? Are you rooting for the bird or the moth? It is a tale of life and death unfolding in a beautiful setting.
There is another, not so obvious, drama evolving in the background. Do you see the caterpillar and pupa? This never-ending cycle of birth and death is playing out before our eyes every day in nature and yet much of it we don’t notice.
In the ultimate story of metamorphosis often we focus on the emergence of the gorgeous fluttering butterfly, a shiny object of distraction so we don’t have to think too much about its origins. But flowers fade, leaves fall, fruit rots and caterpillars putrefy in the cocoon in order to transform.
We have all been in the belly of the beast, which is where I find myself now in the face of my husband’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Things are shed and left here. Something always dies; an idea of who I am, an expectation of how life should be, or a story about how we would live happily ever after. For me it is the Illusion that I have control over anything else but the quality of energy that I bring to any life situation. I am grappling with this idea as I try and find my power.
Even though this dark receptacle is scary and painful I also see it as a place of grace that accepts and receives that which no longer serves me like fear, worry and powerlessness. I am in the cocoon as it were. The only option is surrender so I may be re-arranged into something new. Just as the caterpillar is destined to fly I too will emerge transformed.
Nature is showing me the way. She is broadcasting that forms arise and dissipate and transform.
The opposite of death is not life it is birth. Death and birth are portals to life expressed in different energy forms; birth, life, death, birth, life, death continuing on and on for infinity.
I hope my work reminds you of the connection you have to the natural world. Have you harvested her wisdom to navigate your life?
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