“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:2)
For a long time, I believed that one of the joyful realities of the Christian life is that we are transformed. The word for transformation in Greek is “Metamorphosis”. To be a Christian is to be transformed into someone new! But then my friend and colleague, the late Rev. Phil Love said to me one day, “You know a lot of times people do not want to be transformed.” Suddenly my eyes were opened, and I began to notice that transformation can feel like an unwelcome burden. “I like my life just fine God, leave me as I am.” Oftentimes we resist change. We prefer to think what we already think rather than having our minds renewed. We prefer to live the way we live rather than having our hearts re-sculpted.
Tuesday when I arrived at church, I noticed a half dozen yellow and black caterpillars nibbling in the flower beds outside the south sanctuary doors. When I checked on them Wednesday morning, I discovered that overnight, one had parked its wiggly yellow and black body on the pillar just outside the church door and spun itself into a gray cocoon overnight. While inside that caterpillar will undergo a remarkable transformation, breaking down and reorganizing its body into the structure of an adult butterfly. And in a few weeks, it will fly.
Of all the places it could undergo its metamorphosis, what better place than the entryway to the Sanctuary. Through music and scripture, through shared bread and home baked cookies, through conversation and solitude, God transforms us. The modern mystic Thomas Merton writes that there is no union with God without transformation. (Participating in the New Creation” by Mary Conroe Coelho in The Weavings Reader)
Grace and Peace,
Carla
