Caterpillar Dreams

Eric Carle tells his story of The Hungry Caterpillar like a magician. We are so captivated by all the hungry little caterpillar is eating, that we think that this is what the story is about. It is not until the last page, that we realize that it is a story about transformation. We attend to the outward action, unable to imagine, just like the caterpillar, that our destiny, if we pay sufficient attention, may be the winged life. And this is the larger reality; it is not a story just about caterpillar transformation, but about the possibility of our own transformation.

Like the hungry little caterpillar, Eve ate the apple and nothing has ever been the same since. She gave birth to human possibility. So, what is it that you hunger for? How will you feed that hunger? And by feeding it, how will you be transformed? Be careful. These are provocative and essential questions, and we get the answers wrong most of the time. We feed the wrong thing in the wrong way, and become addicted to things that betray our humanity. We spend too much time feeding the body and not enough time feeding the soul, forgetting that if we truly feed our souls, how we treat our bodies would profoundly change, as would the way that we live our lives.

It is just a simple children’s story, yet we would be wise to ponder its deeper meanings and higher aspirations. The caterpillar, from the moment it hatches, is on an incredible journey that it cannot imagine and the same can be true for us, or not. The journey is simply this: from no-life to caterpillar-life to cocoon-death to butterfly-transformation.

Once we read The Hungry Caterpillar for the first time, every other reading has us transfixed by butterfly transformation. It is, after all, quite a miracle: incredible beauty and the ability to fly. But ask yourself this, “Which is more miraculous, leaving the cocoon to fly or leaving the egg to enter the world as a caterpillar?” Choose life, and then choose transformation.

As you think about your own life, ask yourself again and again: “In this moment, am I a caterpillar or a butterfly?” And expect that the answer will keep changing. If we compare our life span to that of a caterpillar, we literally have hundreds of lifetimes, with the possibility of being transformed again and again. Transformed into what, you may ask? And there is the mystery. No one knows. A caterpillar looking at a butterfly is oblivious to the fact that the butterfly is the caterpillar’s mirror. Ask yourself in any cycle of time, perhaps a month or a year, is this caterpillar time, cocoon time, or butterfly time?

Now, I have already made the case for the miracle of emerging from a cocoon to become a butterfly, the transformation from being earthbound to flying, as well as the birth from an egg to become a caterpillar, the transformation from no-life to life. Neither of these, per se, requires much of us. They are outcomes of processes that we cannot control. The leap of faith, the act of courage, is to accept the fact that our caterpillar life is ultimately not adequate to our dreams, and to begin spinning the silk thread, building the cocoon, and undertaking the hard work of transformation, which is usually hidden from everyone else’s eyes. Most of the time, we refuse the cocoon life, unwilling to die to our present self in order to be born again, unwilling to rely on faith and patience as tools of transformation.

In addition to the fear that prevents us from creating and entering the cocoon, there is the fear of leaving the cocoon. There is what I would call the existential caterpillar decision: Will we choose to “soar immortal, outlasting the sun and moon, or lie forever unwakened in our blind cocoon?” I hope that we do not remain captive to our fear, afraid of change, but choose to become, as one of our hymns has it, “architects of our faith.” As we learn to negotiate the caterpillar transitions of our lives, we will learn to soar higher and higher in our butterfly aspirations.