Part of Emerging Piece triptych in FLORIGAMI IN THE GARDEN traveling exhibition
Unique
Price Available on Request
Up to One Year to Produce
Emerging from the pupa’s pause, an exquisitely beautiful butterfly spreads its vibrantly colorful wings to dry in the sun. Once a caterpillar whose appetite took everything in greed, now it contributes to the world—and all interconnected life—by pollinating countless plants, giving back from what it has received. In between these two wildly different states came the outwardly quiet pupa phase, during which “imaginal cells” (a name given them by biologists) took control of the process. The essential transmutation from caterpillar into its lovely new form could not happen without the consuming phase, nor could it proceed without the imaginal cells. At first these cells are destroyed by the caterpillar’s immune system. But they keep emerging until they gain sufficient numbers. Then the imaginal cells lead the organism into magnificent change.
Box likens the first few imaginal cells to visionary human leaders whose messages were ahead of their time: Socrates, Hypatia, Moses, Jesus, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Marley, and John Lennon. “When truth is presented, it is often rejected and, in some cases, completely eradicated,” he points out. But others come along who hold that same vision and understand the same truth. And when their numbers reach critical mass, however many that may need to be, consciousness shifts. The world—parts of it at first—begins to be reorganized around more life-affirming principles, and outer circumstances change. “It takes courage on the part of those leaders,” Box says. And it takes patience in us.
“The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is so much like our human life,” Box says. “At first just needing, wanting, and taking, humans are grown up and nurtured by the sacrifice and love of our parents’ nature and by our parent: Nature. The planet provides for us, just as the plant offers itself to the caterpillar, so that we may evolve and mature into better beings who give back.”
