The Wonderment: Butterfly Journeys

One day -- a beautiful, drowsy warm, fragrant with blossoms, air filling with butterflies kind of day -- so a Taoist tale goes, a great teacher fell asleep and dreamed he was a beautiful butterfly. He went from flower to flower. He stretched his wings. He floated through the shafts of sunlight and shadow. He glowed when the light shone through his wings. He drank delicate nectar. He felt so free, so beautiful, so wonderful. But then he woke up, finding himself once again a human teacher, wondering he was really a butterfly dreaming of being human, or a human dreaming of being a butterfly.

All of our lives, we have the capacity to be on a transformational journey. A lot of life, we're eating leaves, leaves, leaves. Nom, nom, nom. Munch, munch, munch. Some of life, we're wrapped deep in a chrysalis, growing, changing, until that chrysalis is uncomfortable, restricted. Then we burst forth, discover our wings, drink nectar, and dance. Indeed, throughout our lives, we might go through such a transformation repeatedly.

We may be on a transformational journey, but along that journey, most of us will face adversity – short periods, long periods, individually and collectively. War, addiction, disease, poverty, hunger, thirst, climate change – add to your own list – there’s so many sources of true and tremendous suffering. And yet we continue to endure.

We continue, knowing that all this adversity is wrong, because we are basically good. We lean toward the good. We have the capacity to increase goodness. Transforming wrongness to goodness is the internal norm we are born knowing. We are basically good – all evidence of adversity and suffering to the contrary. As Desmond Tutu quips, “If wrong was the norm, it wouldn’t be news.”[1]

Transformation in the midst of adversity is not easy but it is natural, inherent to our being here, now. We are all endowed with the capacity to love, the capacity for goodness, the capacity for softening our hardened hearts and spirits and sharing acceptance, forgiveness, and love. We can cultivate these practices and become better at them, transforming our selves and our corner of the world in the process. We do not have to remain locked away in a tiny cell of fear, anger, resentment, sorrow, weariness, bitterness, rejection, or loneliness. No one will be able to unlock this cell for you except yourself, because the door isn’t really locked. It might not have been used in a while. But you are beautiful and worthy, loving and loveable, good and gracious, just by being born. The rest of it is your life’s work.

We are already loved and loveable, already have inherent worth and dignity, already have purpose, simply by being born. Awfulness in our lives does not change that purpose, that worthiness, or that loveability. Awfulness only calls us to live more fully in making the world a better place.

Sometimes, though, in the midst of all that awfulness, we want to give into the critic, to the awfulness of the situation, to the adversity. We’re tired. We’re weary. We’re sad. We’re afraid. We’re angry. We’re empty. And there’s just more awfulness. How do we navigate this stinking slough of yuck?

Remembering and accepting the essential goodness each of us has and is and that this world has and is, is the beginning of the transformational process. This week, practice acceptance of your inherent goodness and work on experiencing the inherent goodness of others. Note where you’re having trouble with the practice. Observe when it is easy. Take some time to sit wondering about transforming the difficult and what that will take for you.

You are already loved and loveable, accepted and acceptable. Take heart, you matter.

[1] Desmond Tutu & Mpho Tutu. (2010) Made for Goodness And Why This Makes All The Difference. Edited by Douglas C. Abrams. NY: HarperOne: 5.