Earth Day 2023: Lessons from the Oyster and the Caterpillar
What can these quiet members of the Earth community teach us about transformation?
I have been thinking of the oyster lately.
How she spends her life alone, down in the deep dark of the sea; how the craggy peaks on her roughened shell express her toughness and resilience; how inside that calcified fortress she is tender, soft, vulnerable and sweet.
I have been thinking about how it’s the irritation of a bit of sand inside her shell that gets the oyster creating.
No sand, no pearl.
She takes a sharp-edged bit of silica and works on it patiently, secreting the layers of creative juices that transform ordinary sand into lustrous pearl.
Alone in the dark, the roaring of the great sea around her, she is like the caterpillar in her cocoon, working her magic with methodical, rhythmic attention.
I have never seen an oyster creating a pearl, but I have had the great joy of watching a caterpillar transform into a cocoon.
First she fixes herself head down on a sturdy stalk, curling her body up into a J. Her soft body jerks and vibrates, magically changing into a hard shell. Once the shell is complete, the vibrations stop and the deep transformation begins. You know she is almost finished with her work when the walls of the cocoon become translucent, and you can start to see the veins of the butterfly wings outlined inside.
How might things in the human community change if we embraced the model of these two exemplary creators: the oyster and the caterpillar.
One takes the irritants that beset her and transforms them into beauty.
The other unhesitatingly embarks on total transformation, trusting the inner guidance that assures her that even in the face of complete dissolution, all will be well.
I know that as a human, I am sand in the tender flesh of the oyster of the world.
As a human, I am an earthbound crawling caterpillar, focused on munching, unaware of the great cosmic and Gaian rhythms that so generously provide my sustenance.
On this Earth Day, I offer myself up for transformation.
May the rough being that I am, slouching through these times of crisis and sorrow, be taken up by the world and made beautiful.
May I emerge from these lonely struggles with new energy, insight and sense of purpose, ready to contribute to a world so in need of loving attention.
Stone being. Photo by Jennifer Browdy.
Both processes are such wonderful metaphors "...sand in the tender flesh of the oyster of the world." Indeed.
I wrote a poem about the oyster and the pearl in the same framing - thank you for sharing this