Earlier this year, as the pandemic took hold, and we realised that the world was about to enter into a period of profound uncertainty, Suzanne Nockels and I suggested that we should work together as past president and president elect for the time being, so that Suzanne could take up the role fully in 2021 – and Council agreed. Lots of similar organisations are doing the same kind of thing.
All the things we were used to: travel, full diaries, bookings, plans, even family life and health, were changing. So Suzanne and I had a long phone call (as we could not meet) in which we explored the feeling of this in-between, uncertain state. And we came up with the name ‘Chrysalis’ for our joint Facebook page: a state of change, metamorphosis.
Suzanne knew an artist who could work with us to create two artworks to convey the sense of the chrysalis state – a time between times. My painting is cold and wild, blue/green, like storm in a remote sea, or like the Deep at the beginning of creation, formless until God’s creative Spirit breathes it into shape.
The process inside a chrysalis begins in unmaking. The caterpillar body breaks down, and new cells, called (yes, they are!) imaginal cells, emerge. These carry the new genetic information for metamorphosis into a butterfly. There is no rushing this. The chrysalis allows the slow process of transformation to take its own good time.
Today, Christmas Eve, is a time of waiting. It is the end of Advent, a long period of anticipation, symbolised (in the northern hemisphere, at least), by darkness, winter, nature sleeping, before the slow emergence of new life in the spring: we are living in the imaginal state.
This year, the world has been locked down and waiting, for the cruel pandemic to end. Our diaries are still weirdly empty, time stays formless: can we plan for spring, or summer; when can we meet, shake hands, hug . . .? Even those who have had the vaccination are waiting for the second dose, and the rest of us are in a long, long queue.
But we are also asking, what will happen at the end of this strange, imaginal, time? After all, a butterfly is unimaginably different from the caterpillar. Can we see a transformation from pre- to post-pandemic?
Tomorrow is Christmas Day. The coming of Jesus really did transform the world. He is the emergence of real new life, and new ways of living, healing, forgiveness, challenge, life that overcomes death. As the chrysalis cracks open, how can we offer that bright hope to this world and its tomorrows?
Advent God, hallow our waiting times
keep us from rushing to new certainties
keep us imaginal, open to endless possibilities.
God of transformation, as the world emerges from dull lockdown days,
may we glimpse the bright wings of your Spirit,
catch a vision of what life could be,
and do something about it!
Amen
Janet Wootton