And we know that in all things, God works for the good
of those who love him, who have been called according
to his purpose. (Romans 8: 28)
A Report by Robert R. Schwarz
I write this report like an aging wagon train scout anxious to tell what he’s seen on the trail and hoping it will be helpful to all who read it. It’s a little metaphysical, I’m afraid. Also, I could not ignore the rules I still obey as lifelong journalist nor the strong memories of my stay at the Mississippi abbey, nor my walk through the Breedonk Nazi concentration camp, nor a few of my other world travels as a leadership development manager for the world’s largest volunteer organization, Lions Clubs International. Somehow all of it was to be metamorphized into this piece that I seriously thought should include a few words about the Monarch butterfly and the fictional life of Pinocchio.
I A few words first about that Disney puppet hero of mine, Pinocchio...Perhaps Mom and Dad took you to the Pinocchio movie, as my mother did; or, you read the book. To refresh your memory: Pinocchio was a puppet carved joyfully out of wood by a kind and lonely clock-maker, Geppetto. Despite Pinocchio being made entirely of wood, he spoke English quite well and even had a fairy godmother who saw to it that each time this puppet told a lie, his nose grew longer with each lie. He was blessed with a cricket companion named Jiminy, who spoke to Pinocchio as his conscience . Pinocchio was an innocent lad, except for that day when walking to school .
He was manipulated into trusting a gang of young ruffians who sold him to an unscrupulous circus ring master. Though Pinocchio escaped abusive work as a circus puppet , he was seduced into joining a journey with delinquent youths to the devilish Paradise Island. Here for hours he and a boy companion enjoyed a constant paradise of rule-breaking fun. But when he saw himself gradually turning into a real donkey, Pinocchio fled in terror to the ocean, barely escaping a life of donkey slavery.
When Pinocchio is swallowed by a whale, he washed down to the whale's belly and there encounters Geppetto, who was swallowed by the same whale when Geppetto had set out to find his dearly missed puppet. Pinocchio and Geppetto are freed from the whale when it sneezes explosively from a fire lit by Geppetto in the whale's belly . Both swim towards shore ; Geppetto begins to drown , and Pinocchio saves his master's life.
The book resolves this oceanic misadventure with Pinocchio and Geppetto returning home. That same night, as the puppet sleeps, his fairy godmother enters Pinocchio's dream and kisses him, saying, " Because of your good heart, I will forgive you . Boys who take care of their parents [ like Geppetto ] and help them when they are old and suffering deserve praise and affection, even if they have not been obedient and good. "
When Pinocchio awakes the next morning, he sees that he has become a live, human boy. Across the bedroom he sees his former self, a wooden puppet with dangling arms and legs and a drooping head. The book’s author, Carlo Collodi, now closes his tale with: "Then with great satisfaction, Pinocchio said to himself, ' How ridiculous I was when I was a puppet ! And how happy I am to have become a real boy! ' " .
For years I, a pilgrim here on Earth, would be pestered by the question, for what purpose did God create me? But when I knew what it was, I was wonderfully grateful for it.
II Enter the Monarch ...A few years later while interviewing a nearby neighbor about her eye-catching garden, she told me her hobby was caring for two bushes that attracted butterflies. “I snip off the chrysalis of the Monarch and give it to the neighbor children, " she told me. "They delight in seeing a caterpillar inside that chrysalis slowly come out , now being transformed into a Monarch butterfly. “
She saw my eyes widen and said: “Would you like to take a chrysalis home with you?“
Two weeks later I was sitting at home at my office desk staring at a small greenish capsule-like object that clung to a twig inside a cage. Nine days later , I saw a dark colored object inside the chrysalis ; it was the Monarch's wings, folded alongside its body. Next day I was up once more at 5 a.m., waiting like a wet nurse for the climatic scene of a caterpillar's metamorphosis...A minute later I reminded myself that I had spent nine months in my mother’s belly— waiting for my birth. .
When the butterfly began slowly struggling to free itself from its birth chamber , I was tempted to help it but then said no--let nature handle this. For the next hour I watched the Monarch unfold itself millimeter by millimeter as its body juices filled its wings.
I called for my wife, Mary Alice, and carried the cage out to our backyard where I pulled out the twig on which the emerged butterfly now clung and placed the Monarch on the palm of my hand . It was motionless for several minutes , then launched itself into flight. We watched it soar off over our sunflowers and a few sapling trees and into a sun-lit blue sky . Mary Alice and I turned to each other with smiles. "It's free!" she said.
This scene and my wife’s words I believe, formed a kind of memory chrysalis in my mind, for when the sight of this butterfly was now just a silhouetted speck in the sky above us, I said, "You know what I'm thinking right now, dear …it's that bit of Scripture which says 'though our outer body may be gradually decaying, our inner body, our soul is being renewed day by day. " My wife nodded.
III Freedom Expressed in the “Chrysalis” of a Nazi Prison...In the summer of 2017, Mary Alice and I were in the "Resistance Museum” in Warsaw , Poland , staring in sad silence at butterfly etchings made during World War II by prisoners of the Nazi death camp at Breendonk , Belgium. We had recently seen the remains of that camp and also the hellish exhibits of Auschwitz at the Warsaw Uprising Museum. For hours we shuffled our feet through dimly-lit narrow corridors . We stood still , looking at the nightmarish reminders of the years of brutal murdering and ineffable suffering which the Nazi army had inflicted upon innocent people since invading Poland in 1939.
Somehow, whenever through the years I would visit a jail as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau, scenes of these death camps would flash through my mind, sometimes followed so strangely by another flash of that fetal caterpillar in a chrysalis I once cared for. I asked myself, what can a Monarch butterfly tell us about human life and dearth ?... Enter the metaphysical!
IV The Butterfly and God at the Mississippi Abbey... My trek to know in a dynamic way how to relate to my triune family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit neared the finish line in the wilds of nature at the Mississippi Abbey outside Dubuque, Iowa. I had just finished a talk in the abbey with Sister Gail about the gift of humanhood, a gift so easily taken for granted . I told her I was anxious to stroll through the abbey's square mile of seemingly unending pastures, prairies, and things growing wild all over. . "Go stroll then." She said smiling.
I walked down to the abbey barn and past a vegetable garden with its tidy cultivated crop that provided salads for the abbey’s 19 Cistercian sisters. Posted in the middle of the garden was a weathered sign with four words painted in white: "Where Angels Tread." I swung open a wide wire gate and was greeted by a panorama of ripening wheat, chest-high corn, and alfalfa . Beyond this were uninhabited woodlands , and beyond that was rolling land that gracefully met the Mississippi River bluffs a few miles away.
Walking slowly down a wide dirt path shaped by years of tractor wheels running over it, I paused to gaze at a sky puffed with white clouds and soaring birds—mostly orioles— which kept flushing up from patches of wild flowers. My eyes winked from sunlight glistening from the lower leaves of corn still wet with morning dew . Mother Nature was enchanting me as she did years ago when , on a camera safari with my late wife , we drove all day across a wild Zimbabwe plain.
I could not turn away from the sight of white and blue butterflies and grasshoppers flitting among the tall weeds and thistles that hugged my path . There was the faint orchestration of cricket sounds , and in my mind read a paragraph or two from Canticle of the Creatures penned in the 12th Century by Saint Francis, known for his mystical love of animals . In this blissful moment I faintly heard him crying out his noted canticle of praise for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, and Brother Fire.
I sat down , allowing tall prairie grass to blanket me . Never had I felt so intimate with Nature . I prayed Psalm 23 and, for a brief moment , I yearned to become an indissoluble part of all this nature. That was when I saw a Monarch butterfly alit on a nearby milkweed plant. That same intimate question of mine began demanding an answer: For what purpose did God create me ? Curiosity and an analytical mind had blessed me as a journalist but now was conflicted with my desire to live a more simple life without soul-nagging questions I couldn't answer.
I left the abbey that day with intense restlessness and , of course, a Monarch butterfly etched upon on my mind
V A Mother’s Poem Answers a Pilgrim’s Question…Why do I consider my self a pilgrim? For one thing, I enjoy the adventure of being a pilgrim who loves to explore the wilds of life; it makes me feel that I’m on some important and uniquely important mission. Yet, there are lingering moments when I feel absolutely lost on this mission, friendless and alone, repeating to God please stay with me! I move impatiently for a home I know nothing about...waiting and waiting, so cramped in my human chrysalis as a pilgrim of good will.
The other day I retrieved this poem written by my other a few days after she gave birth to my younger brother Lester. She wrote it in her baby's journal, I believe, as a dialogue between mother and child . She was 21 , and it was the only poem she ever penned .I had not read it in many years. When I did this time, the question, for what purpose did God create me had no answer. I prayed hard that night.
By Dorothy Elenor Schwarz
Where did you come from, Baby dear?
“Out of the Everywhere into here…”
Where did you get those eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
What makes the light in them sparkle and spin ?
Some of the starry spikes I let in.
What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
I see something better than anyone knows.
Where did you get this pearly ear ?
God spoke, and it was made to hear.
Where did you get those arms and hands?
Love itself made those arms and hands.
But how did you come to us, you dear ?
God thought about you, and so I am here.
The End
comments welcome at
rrschwarz777@gmail.com
© 2017, 2022, 2024 Robert R. Schwarz
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