Dying To Be Reborn

I see blooms of Spring everywhere, the colorful symbol of possibility and new life. And yet how ironic that life as we’ve known it, has stopped. 

This is also the season of the Easter. The holiday that focuses on new life and  resurrection. 

All I want to do is focus on new life. 

Yet if I just focus on the possibilities of new life, i’ll miss the tragic beauty that actually has to happen, in order to have new life.

In Christian tradition, this is called The Crucification. A day to let go of what was and to surrender to what is. 

For us, this is our lives right now. The moments when we come face to face with a reality that we don’t like or want. Maybe it’s the relationship that is ending right now, the job you just lost, the news of one more person you loved dying, or this invisible virus that haunts us.

I think of the analogy of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

Did you know the first thing a caterpillar does when it enters the cocoon aka his tomb, is dissolve and meltdown. Completely. It literally turns into a liquified state and melts down so that its cells can reform. I’ve heard there are certain cells in that liquid that are called Imago cells (or as I like to call it, the part of you that knows your destiny), which contain DNA coded instructions for turning it into the butterfly. 

Yep. 

This transfiguration process is happening for the caterpillar. And it knows what its doing.

One thing is for sure, the caterpillar can’t control the process of dissolving or melting down, the only thing it can do is trust the process. 

It has to surrender.

Now back to Jesus. Could it be the story of Easter is actually an invitation for us to die to our egos and surrender to the process of becoming love? 

Could it be this time of quarantine is actually our proverbial time in the tomb to dissolve and melt down the old identities that are no longer serving us? To release what no longer is needed for who we are meant to become?

Jesus couldn’t become The Christ and the caterpillar couldn’t become the butterfly without surrendering to the process of dying to be reborn. 

Maybe then neither can we.