Words of Encouragement
from Mthr. Anne Kelsey
September 7, 2020


Today I want to share something a little different. What follows is a heavily edited portion of a piece that I wrote a few years ago about an event that I still remember fondly. In these times I find that some memories can still brighten my day, as I hope this brightens yours. 

On a bright fall afternoon when I was home visiting my parents, I headed for the Cleveland Museum of Art where Rodin’s sculpture of The Thinker was still commanding attention halfway up the broad steps to the museum’s entrance. Nobody was around and I had the place to myself. As I got close to the front steps I saw a caterpillar moving along the sidewalk.

I grew up in the Midwest and I know about caterpillars, green ones and fuzzy brown and black ones, which arrive in the fall. When I was a child we used to put them on our fingers and let them walk slowly up our hands.

But to call this creature a caterpillar is like describing the Hope diamond as a nice bit of jewelry. It was about eight inches long, about the size of a really really fat bratwurst, and it was bright green, knock your socks off green, luminescent green. It was as if green had just been invented and was strolling to its inauguration. It was so green it made me realize I’d never actually seen green before. There were long tubular things sticking out all over its body, and these were red and yellow and blue. It had fat yellow legs and thin black spikes emerging from some of the tubes on its back. It looked like something Hollywood writers made up while they were completely stoned – a poisonous jungle bug, a caricature, a cartoon, a great joke. It was so extreme I thought for a moment that I was hallucinating, but no, there it was, walking up to the Cleveland Museum of Art as if it owned the place, which in a sense it did. I looked around. Still no one in sight.

This bug was the most phenomenal thing I’d ever seen in real time and space, and I feared that if I told anyone about it nobody would believe me. After all, this was Cleveland. If you’re from Cleveland, at one point or another someone asks you, “Isn’t that where the river caught on fire?” Yes. Thirteen times as a matter of fact, the first time in 1888 and the last time in 1969. The Great Lakes Brewing Company capitalized on that notoriety by making a beer called Burning River, which you can buy all over Ohio. Cleveland is the site of an infamous environmental disaster, not the home of caterpillars that look as if they belong in Costa Rica or the Amazon jungle. 

That caterpillar was fantastic. It filled me with joy and made me glad to be alive. It made me grateful for my body, for eyes to see color, and lungs to appreciate the crisp fall air. It filled me with wonder and admiration. It made me feel that I’d been given a great gift. It convinced me that God is creative beyond our wildest imaginings, and that if God is anything at all, God is flamboyant, extravagant, colorful, awesome, dangerous, and most of all, unexpected. God is playful and God has a great sense of humor. God shows up at the oddest of moments, goes for a stroll in the afternoon sun, and heads out to the Cleveland Museum of Art to cross my path. At the end of the day I’m convinced that in some important way it was God.

Before you start rolling your eyes, bear with me a bit.

The disciples saw Jesus do many incredible things – walk on water, cure terrible diseases, raise the dead. And at least for Peter, James, and John, Jesus turned into a glowing, transparent kind of electric ghost in front of their eyes, an event we call the Transfiguration. Whatever happened utterly changed their lives. They saw the depths of divine life radiating through the cells of everyday human flesh and it convinced them of Christ’s divinity as nothing else had. It was so spectacular and so unexpected and so wonderful it scared them witless. It was so transformative they talked about it even though Jesus said not to. 

I’ve never seen Jesus glowing on a mountain. But I have seen a caterpillar.

Truly, God is revealed throughout nature – and also in music, art, and dance - but God isn’t a caterpillar or a symphony or a picture or a jig, and Christ isn’t an abstraction or a good idea or words on a page. But God is revealed in the here and now, and not as a second-hand experience. Christ is in the physical reality of bread and wine not only within the church and consumed after saying the approved words, but outside of it, too, in every single physical reality, which is, after all, where we spend most of our lives. The universe has an underlying sacramental foundation - Christ is here, in all the incredible works of creation, and the soul on its spiritual journey towards the heart of God travels through it. W.H. Auden wrote that on the journey we “would see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.” All we have to do is open our eyes.

The caterpillar I saw turns out to be a member of a family of giant silkworms, the larva of the largest moth in America, the robin moth, which has a wingspan of six inches and feeds off maple trees. It’s Latin name is Hyalophora cecropia. I shared most of this with an interdenominational clergy group whose members have multiple advanced degrees, emphasizing that God was not an academic, and they told me I was just doing theology. 

So go on out there, open your eyes, and have some fun doing theology!

Blessings,
Anne+ 

  • Please register to attend Sunday's 8:00 AM in-person, outdoor worship service by 11 PM Saturday.

  • Please register to attend Sunday's 9:00 AM in-person, outdoor worship service by 11 PM Saturday.

  • Please register to attend Sunday's 10:00 AM in-person, outdoor worship service by 11 PM Saturday.

  • Sunday services are on the playground and parking on Wydown is encouraged.

  • Those following the Sunday online service at 10 AM may download the Sunday Morning Prayer service leaflet posted on the webWe join with one voice in the Worship of the living God.