For at least three years, perhaps longer, I had the opportunity to write an introductory paragraph for a rubber stamp store's weekly email newsletter. My home stamping heaven, Stamp Your Heart Out in Claremont, CA, closed on March 5 after 25 years. My friend and owner Joan Bunte is now retired. While all who've been fans rejoice for her, we snivel for ourselves. There is so much we will miss.
The paragraph, Joan's idea, was called "Word of the Week" and in it I was free to choose a word or short phrase and then just riff on it with whatever ideas, memories and emotions came to me. It was one swell gig, made all the better by comments and letters of support, of appreciation. No writer could ask for more.
One day there may be another newsletter or some form of communication with her ample mailing list, one day after Joan has time to discover a life that is not wall-to-wall responsibility. Until then, because I miss my task, I think I'll start my own Word of the Week here on the blog. And here I can include photos or music or videos. Shall we begin?
Word of the Week: LEPIDOPTERA
What the order of insects that includes moths and butterflies offers is the ultimate model for transformation. The process of evolving from crawling to entering soupy suspended animation to emerging with wings reminds me - as do attentive friends who remember what I often forget - about process. Not all aspects of process may look or feel attractive, appealing. If one was always just dandy, it wouldn't be process. After a brief guided meditation in which I discovered my spirit totem creature was of the lepidopteran persuasion, I shared the story
here. Redemption and transformation are two favorite themes, experiences that I believe may be ours but that we achieve not by coming at them head-on but by either tripping over or backing into them, possibly while asleep or in any one of a number of altered states. I feel both are the product of grace, pure grace and not determination. As I examine my self-proclaimed or self-suspected slackerish leanings I know that grace alone will deliver me. So I look to the lepidoptera and an observable arc of changing from this into that, as aware as I am able to be that my metamorphosis is a lifetime's journey. Ebenezer Scrooge may have received a miraculous overnight awakening. A transition which takes longer is no less welcome, no less a miracle.
2 comments:
Transformation through inspiration - what reading blogs is for me, present company included.
Kass - Thank you. There is so much around us to inspire, isn't there? The sun and water to our growing, changing selves. xo
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