The pages of the Bible do not deny it: God has a curious habit of appointing undeserving and unlikely candidates who, let’s face it, might as well shame God’s name if they were to stand on their own--from the perpetual deceiver Jacob to stuttering Moses whose whole life was a lie, to Peter who was too ashamed of his Master even though his Master was never ashamed to call him His own, and finally the terrorizing Saul. If they were not running from God, they were outright enemies of God. Yet from these people came the birth of Israel, their freedom from slavery, and the greatest martyrs in history.
When people think of metamorphosis, many revel in the glory of the butterfly. It's easy to take for granted what happens inside the cocoon, the subject matter of this painting. Why the cocoon which seems so stagnant, only next to a lifeless shell or a rotting corpse, perhaps?
Because in the cocoon is not magic, rather a desperate struggle to escape the old nature - parasitic, selfish, good for nothing – a struggle without which one cannot begin to fly.
A short story entitled, "Hope for the Butterflies" talks about caterpillars conforming to the bandwagon of crab-mentality, not knowing what they’re after. In the senseless race to the top of the "caterpillar pillar", some fall to their death the same way they were born: a caterpillar.
But change--metamorphosis--is a sign of life. And so we are not to look at our temporary lots in life as an end in itself. After all, why crawl when you can fly?