Cocooning.
The Leawood House was full two Saturdays ago as John Freeman and I opened the conversation on “Anxiety and the Holy Imagination.” When is the last time you talked about how your life is affected, perhaps even shaped, by your experience with anxiety? We all have some kind of relationship with worry, pressure, and stress.
Even the drive down the mountain to Greensboro that weekend found me feeling anxious about a property we are trying to sell. Ironic, huh? But real. The path to our True Selves doesn’t free us from the humanity of anxious experiences, but it equips us with the hope and the tools for turning every difficulty, real or imagined, into the formative soil of transformation.
As we enter the final week of Lent, what has your journey been like so far? Hopeful? Difficult? Disorienting? Reorienting? Maybe a little of all that…
I’m reminded of the classic metaphor of the caterpillar-butterfly metamorphosis as we move closer to the “Dark Night” of the grave. The caterpillar cannot transform itself; it can’t will itself into being a butterfly, even though this is its unquestionable destiny. And neither can we push ourselves into the birth canal of becoming. Yet we are far from passive in this journey.
We are co-creators in the formation of our souls.
What the caterpillar can do is build its cocoon. It fashions the context, the environment of its transfiguration. The place where old things die and new things come to life. The place where beauty and grace emerge.
Jesus entered his own cocoon, and came out the other side with new glory…but how do we do this?
Spiritual practices are the small submissions, the little deaths of will and comfort, that spin the formational cocoon of our becoming. We can manage neither the course nor the timetable of our transformation, but can cultivate the setting. We can actively and intentionally place ourselves in the place where transformation happens. Or, of course, we can ignore such inconveniences and remain a caterpillar. God rarely forces Godself upon us. We get to choose.
So what is that place where transformation happens? I offer several answers to offer, or rather, a convergence of several factors and forces. It begins with desire. Deep, honest yearning for the True Self, for the butterfly. Combine desire with humility—that teachable spirit that recognizes the alchemy of our great need and God’s great love. Then place desire and humility within the context of “expectant apart-ness,” which is another term for spiritual practice.
Silent meditation, a prayerful walk in the woods, talking out loud with God, journaling your longings. Any kind of attentive space that’s not over-crowded by your monologue but is spacious enough for listening…and hearing…and being. Unhurried. Persevering. Godward. This is the cocoon! This is the place where, day after day, we present ourselves with consent to the transforming power of divine love. We wait with hope. We celebrate small successes. We grieve our failures. And we trust ruthlessly that we are bound to God by God, beyond either success or failure.
With time, work, humility, and perseverance, the butterfly is inevitable. God will settle for nothing less in you.
growing the soul
This weekend, get outside and find something that’s coming to life—a seed, a sprout, a bud, or maybe even a cocoon. Touch it (gently) and meditate upon this embodied sermon. Visualize yourself in that space. What is falling away? What is coming forth? Take heart and receive God’s delight in your becoming.
serving the world
Turn that same attentiveness toward others now. What is coming forth is their lives? Can you name it? Can you call it forth with faith? Speak forth the faith of emergence to someone this week.
takeaway
New life lies just beyond the cocoon.