Socialcaterpillar’s Weblog

This Saturday, my role as a PeaceCaster led me to an event sponsored by The Center (for Interfaith Relations), held at The Metro United Way building. I arrived early to help set-up, and found myself greeted by a heavy dose of rain, as well as our Program Director taking refuge in his car. Rather than rolling down our windows, and yelling back and forth to one another, I decided to make the mad dash through the rain to his car.

I had been assigned to assist in interviewing the environmentalist, and psychologist, Bill Plotkin. Now, I make no pretension of hiding my credulity toward—what I’m tempted to call—the “New Age,” but I have the utmost faith in the choices of our Program Director.

Once again, my faith in the PeaceCasters was reinvigorated, as I watched the interviewer (you know who you are, should you read this) execute his interview with the most spectacular maturity. The interview laster for a good half-hour, and covered topics ranging from media, to the role of nature in child development, to education reform, etc…. I found myself surprisingly enthralled.

The crowd dispersed once the lecture had ended, and I began milling about. At one point I found myself face to face with the Parent Association Chair from Waldorf (School of Louisville), and at another with a fellow volunteer from the IdeaFestival. I wasn’t surprised to find a Waldorf friend—it was an apparent overlap in the social strata; however, the connection for my comrade from the IdeaFestival left me intrigued.

I woke up the next morning still a little bewildered, particular at the fact that I had become so resolute on waking so early that morning, and dedicating eight hours of my day to Mr. Plotkin’s intensive workshop. I made the (oh, so extended seven minute) drive, over to Saint Agnes Church, where the workshop was to be held in “The Barn” behind the church. It isn’t so much a barn to my eyes, as a brick house vaguely resembling a barn however.

The day was full of familiar faces: a couple from my time in a Theory U reading group, and some from the Faith Leader’s Forum (another two day’s stories). The process started with my sharing a strange and only half-remembered story from my childhood—one of my earliest memories of being in nature. It continued with me then speaking about myself, from the voice of the inhabitants of this memory; in my case the woods, trees, wind, and my father, although we left that undiscussed. The day concluded with my climbing into a slightly large and malformed tree, and having a rather personal conversation with it about my failed relationships, and my fears for the future. I left feeling quite sad and ashamed that there wasn’t more that I could do for the tree, which had been so hospitable in allowing me to spend my time among it’s branches.

After a final farewell to the group, and some exchanges of email addresses and the such, I made my way from the forest, to the Monkey Wrench, where some students of a friend of a friend were exhibiting their skateboard art. It was a strange contrast, and I couldn’t help be feel terribly unique, despite being among the largest group of my peers I’ve been around in maybe years.

It hasn’t been until now that Bill Plotkin’s words, which have been hovering in the periphery of my mind since, have begun to connect with me in that moment of poetic recognition, where you , and your place in the world, seem to momentarily align. He spoke of the stage of our life which is traditionally reserved for late adolescence, which he refers to as the cocoon: the time when the caterpillar literally weaves its own tomb, to liquify its body, lose all semblance to the creature it once was, and reemerge. I wonder, as I feel that I have only stepped into this threshold of being a caterpillar, if I am not really spinning that very tomb, preparing my own psychological death, to see what might emerge?