Butterflies and Baptisms

Stunning Beauty!

It was a pleasant summer day for a drive into the Berkshires. There in a town called South Deerfield is a place called "Magic Wings". It is a butterfly conservatory and I took a number of shots there of some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. It was an enchanting experience. Quiet New Age Music, butterflies flitting about, and flowers and fountains all making a quiet tribute to the beauty there is all around us every day.

It is no wonder that the early Christians selected a butterfly to be the symbol for the resurrection. It is interesting to note that such an everyday event like a grub becoming a chrysalis, and then emerging as a beautiful butterfly became a symbol for baptism and the resurrection.

The early Christian church understood that what God was looking for from the human family was a total change and not just "membership". For faith to take root, there needs to be a total renewal, a "metamorphosis" of the nature of human nature itself.

This is not just a few drops of water on the forehead. This, like a butterfly, a whole new way of being.

We were really enchanted by the butterfly conservatory. We wandered transfixed by beauty and silence. How like God to evoke in us a sense of the holy in just such a way. How awesome is life. We wander transfixed by the magnificent dimensions of the many moments we experience.

If we want to absorb it in in all its fullness, we will be much more than a common grub, or even something cooped up in a cocoon.

We will emerge at some point into what we were meant to become. We are meant to be "something beautiful for God".

Fr. Paul