Becoming Hope ~ Imaginal Cells for Celtic Advent Day 13

Human butterfly crop circle, The Netherlands, August 2009

At Advent we are waiting for a birth, and neither waiting nor birth are easy. This is a transformation; subversive, uncomfortable, disturbing. Come, disturbing God!

It takes courage to sit with this discomfort, rather than drift easily and mindlessly into the secular consumerism and distracting over the top festivity of the Christmas period. Of course, for some, the demands to spend huge amounts of money, to prove our worth through the extravagance of the presents we can afford to buy, is intensely uncomfortable. Yes, Advent is a season of discomfort but, at its culmination, everything is changed.

Which brings us to this week's theme of Hope. It isn't easy to stay hopeful whilst we wait for change to come and so it matters to have images at our fingertips to help us. For me, one of these is imaginal cells.

These are cells that 'imagine' a butterfly into being, holding all the potential for what will come to be. When a caterpillar is ready to transform, previously dormant cells within its body begin to awaken and multiply. Even as the caterpillar retreats into its cocoon there is no part of it that is recognisable as a butterfly. Inside its chrysalis the caterpillar dissolves into a formless organic gloop and this is when the, previously dormant, imaginal cells begin their work.

At first these change-provoking cells are detected as a threat and attacked by the caterpillar's immune system. But they continue with their work. Initially acting alone, they begin to multiply, connect with one another, passing information until they reach a tipping point, and then, WINGS, a BUTTERFLY! Here, is an everyday miracle, like any birth.

This is a perfect analogy for the way in which we can be the imaginal cells for the 'body' of our own species;

• Tenaciously imagining what could be, even in the midst of structures that seem to be dissolving.

• Withstanding a world that seems set on its own destruction and which sees those who speak of a different way, who are counter-cultural as Jesus was, as a threat.

• Hold onto the thread of a hope that destruction and dissolution are somehow needed.

• Connect with one another in all manner of ways, offer support, gather, tell our holy stories of better things, wait for the tipping point (and the tipping point will come).

This is our work and we were born to do it. We must imagine, and never stop imagining, because our imagining will make it real. It already is.

I find this image liberating; both because of the vision of transformation through seeming collapse, and because it tells us that we don't need to persuade everyone that change is needed. There just need to be enough of us and everyone will be brought along. Until the 'enough of us' is reached all we need to do is find and support one another in working for change in the inner or outer worlds.

We are told that we are the Body of Christ, just as all who believe are, just as all creation is the Body of Christ, or for those of other paths, sparks of the Divine. And what greater journey of transformation than that of Jesus to the Cosmic Christ? We aren't watching that story unfolding as onlookers. We ARE the story unfolding.

And so we wait, we choose unknowing, emptiness, as a space in which God and transformation can come in. We choose discomfort, because we must. Trust. Have hope. Be an imaginal cell.

Come, disturbing God!