Last month I wrote very briefly about the miracle of a caterpillar turning inside out to encase itself in a chrysalis, for the purpose of trans-forming itself into a butterfly.

Well, the story went on to unfold in a bigger way than I had any idea about, and I want to share it with you.

I found out that there had been eleven caterpillars on Jeffrey’s veranda. Only five made it to the chrysalis stage. At the time of that blog writing a month ago, only one had successfully emerged from its chrysalis (Jeffrey had not been there to see it actually emerge) and that little guy that in the video in my August blog was the last one.

Jeffrey had his own story of deep transformation going on before and concurrently with this caterpillar business, as did I.

On the morning of August 27, four days before I was to take three questers out to fast (on land up near my family’s old ranch on Bear Lake in Utah), Jeffrey texted me a photo of a darkening chrysalis, saying “that means something is going to happen”. I promptly called him and we had an intense conversation about this whole mind-blowing transformation process, and the meaning we were now making about this one last caterpillar — or more precisely a mush of some sort inside a chrysalis — and whether it would make it to becoming a butterfly or not. 

The odds were against it. 

For reasons I don’t understand, it felt to me that my own future depended on this one worm’s success in radical change. In fact, it felt to me the whole human project, ala climate change, massive polarization and upheaval all around the world, depended on this one worm’s success.

We were both sending it all kinds of positive ju-ju; attention riveted on its process, hour by hour. Jeffrey sent me periodic updates, as he sat there, watching and praying. 

I was at the lake on the beach, lying in the warm afternoon sun when I got the new via photo: A wet, slimy creature had emerged from its cracked open shell! Massive waves of relief and gratitude rolled through me and I wept. As did my friend Jeffrey. He noted that it was on this date exactly two years ago that he had embarked on his long journey of outer and inner change, driving away from Salt Lake City, his home of 25 years.

I stood up and walked into the cold lake, roiling with waves and whitecaps from the late summer wind. I fought my way out beyond the lake surf, and bobbed up and down, anticipating the oncoming ridges of water, rejoicing in wild celebration.

Returning to the shore, I stepped onto the warm rocky sand and the whole landscape around me seemed to shimmer with some inner vibrancy. I raised my hands to the heavens. In a very real and strange way, I felt in my whole being that I had been re-born. 

Later Jeffrey told me the story of this creature’s first 24 hours as some entirely different thing. It didn’t know how to fly. It was pooping out some strange liquid for a while, hanging on its now transparent shell of a chrysalis. It would open up its wings, to dry them out, and attempt to flutter now and again. In the early evening, it tried to fly, careening out over the balcony . . . and Jeffrey caught it gently for fear it would fall down into the street. The creature then stayed on Jeffrey’s hand, gripping his finger with its slender feet, and stayed and stayed. It would not be put on any plant. It clung to this human hand — until finally, it was ready to go and flew away, landing safely into a palm tree across the street.

Now, two weeks later here in Utah, the vision fast is accomplished and the three good men left to go back to their lives. We all had been changed. I felt the quiet of their absence, familiar with the feeling of sweet sorrow of a close tribe of people scattering after sacred time together on the land.

At the end of that final leaving-day, my thirteen-year-old niece came to do some watercolor painting with me. She told me that as she walked the short distance from her house next door, she saw a butterfly on the driveway, trying to fly. She said,”I think it was a monarch.”

In her gentle way, she picked it up and it clung to her finger for a moment, before flying away into the field to the west. 

I asked her if she’d seen monarch butterflies here at the ranch before. 

“Not that I remember.” she replied, bending over her painting on which she was intently working. Then she looked up at me.

“It was strange.” she said.