A couple of years ago we planted milkweed in the backyard to help the monarch butterflies, as many did. Little way stations along the journey. And they came; that first year. It felt like an affirmation and a miracle. Just a few but they ate and laid their eggs and the caterpillars emerged, devoured the plants, made cocoons, emerged, and magically flew away. It was a season of amazement.

The second year they did not come back. It was a cold summer and we really didn’t get much blooming until after they would have visited and then it rained early. I was afraid they would think we couldn’t be counted on and would skip us entirely in the future. I’m sure that’s not how it works but it was a worry.

Last year we planted more milkweed, despite the lack of visitors, and went with a different variety so we would have options. It grew to a great forest by mid-July and then the monarchs started to appear. First just one here and there, then two and three. For a month they flitted about eating, perching in the redwood tree, hovering in the air. Beautiful. But again the unseen and the unknown tests one’s faith. I worried, I wondered: are they getting what they need are they laying eggs will the aphids harm them (a whole other situation that).

The caterpillars became visible last week, tiny and now huge. One and then many, dozens. Just about large enough many of them to disappear soon into their cocoons. And then we start again. I know to have faith but I still wonder anxiously if they will make it, if they will complete the cycle. They won’t all, that’s just the odds. It is tough to be a butterfly – egg – caterpillar – cocoon – butterfly. That’s life. But some will and that will be a miracle, because this is a miraculous thing that happens – don’t think it’s not. Transformation of all kinds is a miracle because it requires us to let go of who we were, how we were, and willingly moving into that is not something that is easy to do.

I often wonder if the caterpillar knows what it must undergo in order to change. I suppose not because if it did, like people then, I think it would resist. It might rather die a caterpillar than face the terror of that coming apart that happens in the cocoon. In those moments when I have been changed it has not been willingly. Something has gone terribly off plan and part of me simply has to be reworked, rebuilt or the whole thing dies.

When a caterpillar goes into that cocoon they don’t just grow wings. Their entire being comes apart, becomes a mushy goo, and then gets put back together as something entirely new. Sure there are hints of what was, but really it’s just the component pieces reworked in a new way. How can you imagine being a butterfly, how can you imagine a butterfly really when what you have been is a caterpillar. That’s the miracle – that’s faith – we all have that ability, we are all given that promise but the wings won’t just get slapped onto our backs, we have to be willing to be completely undone so that we can become that new thing beyond our wildest imagination.