A flash of bright, moving color in the sun. That is my earliest recollection of a butterfly. Even today, in the latter years of my adulthood, that is what first catches my eye. It does seem to be an experience tuned to capture the interest of a young child: The movement. The bright colors, something little kids seem to enjoy no matter whether it comes in butterflies or a box of crayons. But nothing can quite duplicate a butterfly's tantalizing lure. "Come and see me up close," it seems to say as it pauses on a flower not so far away. But then it is off again, the direction it takes shifting unpredictably. A beautiful combination of fragility and energy, a butterfly seems to be perfectly designed to encourage children to delight in life.
Like all children of elementary-school age, I soon learned about the connection between caterpillar and butterfly. Even though the transitional state between the two was first described to me as a "cocoon," rather than the technically precise name of "chrysalis," I learned about the marvelous life cycles of these most beautiful insects: Egg, larva (caterpillar), chrysalis, winged adult. At some point I encountered how this almost unbelievable metamorphosis out of a dead-looking chrysalis has been a ready-made symbol for resurrection and rebirth. The promise of new life and possibilities, even when death seems to have brought everything to an end.
In more recent years, I have become intrigued by some additional scientific facts about these insects. Specifically, that the winged butterfly -- which we tend to think of as being the point of all this metamorphosis -- actually lives an average of only two weeks. Moreover, in the wild, only one percent of individuals make it through the whole cycle in all its stages. I remember a man whose son was born with a genetic illness that meant the boy was destined to live only into latter teens unless he could get successful marrow and liver transplants. The family struggled over the course of years, stretching out the life of a boy whose biological life did not naturally stretch into adulthood. After the son died at college age, the father said that the most comforting words any person said to him were, "Your son's life was not wasted." This, then is the latest lesson the butterflies carry for me, if I remember how short the lives of all winged butterflies actually are. Who would want to declare their lives a waste?
Perhaps a butterfly in flight can lead us to even another insight. Eighty years before the theologian Paul Tillich's book titled The Eternal Now made that phrase famous, the nature-mystic Richard Jefferies described an experience he had outdoors:
"It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine;
I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air.
Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity."
~~~
Do you have any special recollection about butterflies? What do you like about them?
(The Jefferies quote is from his book The Story of My Heart [1883]. Chap. 3.)
(The photo of the chrysalis is by "Pollinator at the English language Wikipedia,"
and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)
(The photo of the chrysalis is by "Pollinator at the English language Wikipedia,"
and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)