Chrysalis

While reading a children’s book on nature to my daughter a few days ago, the author said, “Nobody quite knows how the green goop inside of a chrysalis turns from a caterpillar into a butterfly. All that we know is that after a few weeks, the butterfly emerges.”

I mentioned this metaphor before. At that time, I mentioned it in terms of just needing to stop blogging for a few days. Now, I am thinking about this metaphor for the whole of my journey.

I recently stepped down from preaching. I had been asked to contribute to our local church by preaching about once every six weeks. Normally, I love to do that and six weeks is just about right. But I needed to cancel two months ago, and I just called to cancel my sermon in two weeks. I asked to be taken off of the schedule for now. 

“It is my sabbatical year, and i need to respect my need to rest right now, and be a taker, not a giver.” I said something like that.

The reality is that a sermon would have absolutely wiped me out. I have so little energy!

I am blogging this morning, on a day off: but with fear and trepidation. Usually, when I do this, it scraps the day and I end up needing to take a two hour nap. My wife is fighting a migraine, and so I can’t do that to myself. I will probably stop after one post.

I mentioned to my wife that it is so frustrating and humbling to have to admit that “I am so weak.” 

“You are weak in some ways, where you used to be strong,” She said, “But you are becoming very strong in ways that you used to be weak.”

Well, that is true. My ability to stand up for myself, and stand up to bullies has completely shifted. My ability to separate from my parents has shifted. My ability to slow down and focus, and see myself clearly has shifted. In so many ways, I am becoming an amazing man. I am giving birth to the decisive, creative, focused, loving, deep, wise person that I always wanted to be. 

…just not quite yet.

There is strength marbled in with the anxiety and crippling fatigue. It is coming, but not here yet. I need to respect the journey.

I am still green goop inside; the worm hasn’t sprouted wings quite yet.

I think that the metaphor of a chrysalis is accurate because I literally feel like neural pathways inside are liquifying, and reforming. I feel like I am going through adolescence all over again. Like critical parts of myself will die, and give birth to completely other things.

One symptom of this is creativity. I have mentioned several times my music. It seems fairly unimpressive, probably, because I have not been able to finish my songs: and if I did, the songs (honestly) wouldn’t sound all that great. We are used to listening to excellence in music. However, I am writing songs. I wrote songs as a teen, then stopped for over a decade. I used to try so hard, but literally had nothing to say. Now, I have so much to say: just not enough time to write it down.

I think that creativity is a symptom of two things: first, change, which forces the deep self to seek to make sense of the world all over again. When the rational mind cannot grasp the complexity of life, the poetic and emotional takes over. A poem or picture or song can express what an essay could not.

The other day I woke from one of my now-common afternoon naps. In the drowsiness between waking and sleeping I wrote the poem “A coal miner’s tale.” It was a complex story about speaking out about abuse, receiving the consequences of that (in this case, the whistle-blower was killed), and the legacy of speaking the truth. Stylistically, it is far from perfect. Those that I have shown it to so far have shrugged.

However, for myself I find it incredibly powerful that I wrote a poem again! In the past, I wrote poems, which became like flags or anchor points along my journey. 

That is true. I could tell a brief overview of my life story by the poems that I have written. That would be interesting to construct sometime.

In this transition time, good things are happening. My strength is very fragile right now. I can be brought to my knees by a thought, a word, a sight. My anxiety can spike over many things. I am not able to give substantively, or contribute much to the world, other than this blog. And yet I am growing. Changing.

In the darkness, in the obscurity: something new is forming inside of me. I am excited for what will emerge one day, perhaps towards the end of this year, my year of sabbatical.