If you look very closely at the heart of this photo, you may be able to spot a miracle: among the milkweed leaves and blossoms there is a Monarch caterpillar!
My garden is crawling with these little fellows at the moment, all happily munching their way through the milkweed. The casual observer won’t see a single one of them. All that most people see are the colorful flowers and the large, weedy-looking bushes.
This caterpillar is a tiny miracle. In a week or so, she’ll find a handy spot to set up housekeeping and make the cocoon, which will look like a bright little piece of jade studded with gold. No one is likely to notice her for another two weeks, when she emerges from the chrysalis stage as a fully-formed Monarch butterfly. Then she’ll look like the miracle she is.
We pass by “caterpillars” all the time in our lives, miracles we are just too busy or preoccupied to see, miracles that are not yet very fancy. My wish for all of us this Shabbat is that we will each have a chance to see at least one such miracle in our own lives, one tiny thing that has escaped our notice.
May this be a Shabbat of peace and blessing, a Shabbat of seeing clearly!
P.S. – if you still can’t find the caterpillar, visualize an X drawn from the four corners of the photo. Look at or just above the place where the two lines cross.
What a lovely thought for Shabbat Rabbi Ruth! As I look out my patio doors and I see the birdhouse hanging from the patio roof, I have been watching Mr. & Mrs. Finch flying in and out busily tending, I hope, to their little chicks. I am eagerly awaiting the miracle of the day when the chicks will emerge and miraculously fly away from their parental nest. …any day now. Shabbat Shalom!
Found it. I hope I find one on my way home too and throughout this Shabbat.
Nice blog, interesting posts. 🙂
Lovely! The photo and the post. Thank you for sharing.
Lovely. Thank you for sharing.