Caterpillars, Butterflies, and the Work of the Prophet

Many times in the past few weeks as I've done work in the butterfly garden, I've thought, I did not think this through.  I didn't anticipate how many caterpillars we might have and how much milkweed they would eat.  I didn't think about where the caterpillars would go to make their chrysalis.  I didn't think about the fact that so many of them might not make it to butterfly status. 

We are learning/relearning lessons I didn't plan to teach.

Yes, it's a metaphor for much of my life.  But the butterfly garden has brought me joy, even as I consider the logistics of it all.

Yesterday a student came to get me:  a butterfly was emerging from its chrysalis.  We had a great time gathering and watching.  The rains swept in, and one student went to her car to get an umbrella.  The student who didn't have to go to class held the umbrella over the emerging butterfly.

This picture may be my favorite from this butterfly garden adventure:

Sadly, by afternoon, it was clear to me that the butterfly was struggling, and by the time I left in the evening, I'm fairly sure the butterfly was dead.  Sigh.

But there are other chrysalises and other caterpillars and life will continue.

My writing time grows short, but I do want to remember how long I had this vision for the garden, and how few people shared it.  They weren't openly hostile, not most of them, but they had trouble envisioning it.  And now, people tell me how much they enjoy it.  One student said that even if we had no caterpillars or butterflies, that she would still enjoy the green additions to the concrete space.  Hurrah.

I came across this quote this morning, and it seems a great way of concluding this post--as well as preserving a quote that I want to remember:

"The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one. . . ."

Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination