caterpillar soup

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Predictably as we move into winter solstice, this week is about releasing what is dead so that new life can enter. There was a situation we pondered and pondered but could never quite figure out; suddenly we’ve realized  that either the world is upside down or a complete shift in perspective is required. We may not know how to get there (despite the directions of the grownups, all the routes were detours), but we know where we want to be. As cheesy as it sounds during the holiday, our heart really is our guide.

This week is about endings. Deaths. The fire that calls down the rain to nourish the new sprouts. How can the tenders shoot up if the land has not been cleared? Our lives as caterpillars are over, and we observe the architecture of our interior selves crumble to glorious ruins. We are hypnotized by our own destruction, morbidly curious at how this kind of transformation could herald anything but a permanent and humiliating end. We are being pulled into some next version of ourselves that we can’t predict or understand. We are pure life force, searching for a form. This week is chrysalis.

Do caterpillars have regrets? Do they bemoan the grooves they never crawled, now that their legs have turned to soup? Do they hunger for another sunset, another breeze at dusk when the hot sidewalk is suddenly cool? Do they long for the days of fearing and needing the rain?

This week we will feel our twinges of sadness as the past shuts off the lights and locks the doors. We will mourn the places and faces to which we can never return. And then we will flex our wings (wings?! Where did those come from?) and fly.

After the cocoon, we bloom. O ye of little faith, why do you doubt?

~Oubria

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