The Caterpillar Has No Memory of Wings
Technically speaking, summer as a season does not end until September 22. But in an academic sense, we are rapidly approaching the end of summer as schools around our area start their fall lessons. Most of my own children will resume school next week and so it feels a bit like summer is coming to an end.
We have children in middle and high school as well as college now. I wonder what they will learn this year. I am interested to see where they embrace a stretched horizon and where they might decide to let an existing one stand. As always, they surprise me and I am eager to see what will unfold in this year to come for them.
I ran across a line the other day that seems to sum up this idea: “The caterpillar has no memory of wings.” It comes out of an article written by Judah Akers (from the band Judah & the Lion) about a song on their forthcoming album. When I read the line, I had to pause. Yes, this is true… the caterpillar has no concept of wings at all! In time, though, it will; but by then it will not be a caterpillar any more, it will be a butterfly. It will have had a new experience and incorporated this new knowledge into itself.
What a lovely sentiment though: we have the joy of continuing on in life to discover new parts of ourselves that we have not met or uncovered yet.
This idea of discovering more about ourselves is exactly what I hope for when it comes to my own children and the approaching school year. I hope they have new experiences that help them learn more about who they are. Do they love creative writing? Or perhaps they discover they enjoy or dislike yoga, statistics, or even eating pistachios? Time will tell. But I do hope they stretch a little outside of what they already know, because God is still working in their lives and helping them become this next version of themselves.
Truthfully, this growth is what I hope for all of us. Whether or not we remember or realize it, God is at work in our daily lives. If we want, there is always beauty to notice, people to love, and new things to discover about ourselves and others. God’s hand is there, creating, shaping, and holding us.
The caterpillar has no memory of wings… but in the future, there may be a new version that does have that understanding. Some of the pieces of us have been there either wholly or in part, and they were just waiting for our discovery.
So, my prayer for us – and all the students returning to classes – is that we keep growing. May we keep discovering new facets of ourselves. And may we remember that God has been with us all along – in this and future versions of us.
