Carrol Vertrees: Gain strength from life’s struggles

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Carrol Vertrees

Updated: January 28, 2012 7:26PM

One of the tenors sitting beside me in the choir probably thought I was napping during the sermon! Come on! I was meditating.

I was awake enough to hear some eloquence from the pulpit when the pastor talked about our emphasis on life after death. Maybe more important, he said, is how we view “Life After Birth.” What do we do with this gift of life? Good question.

Bits and pieces, snippets of eloquence are all around us, waiting to be collected. They can enrich our lives. No need to describe eloquence — we can see, feel, or hear it if we are alert — even if we may be half-dozing. Maybe it is in a line of music, a picture, a sunset, the touch of a friendly hand just when we need it. Or a piece of a sermon.

The poet Keats said beauty is a thing of joy forever, and that’s how it is with the sounds and sights of eloquence.

Sometimes it comes not in bits of joy, but in stern admonitions, advice about life, as the opening line of Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.” It says “So live that when thy summons comes ... ”

Even if we seem to be dozing through life, we can keep our antennas up, alert for lessons that can make our lives richer.

Maybe it was ordained that this life-after-birth remark by the minister would remind me of a beautiful, busy creature — one of God’s eloquent creations: the butterfly.

A few years ago I quoted a Hobart principal’s words about a teacher who was retiring: “ ... She was like a butterfly. She went about doing small miracles daily without asking for anything in return.”

That is a nice sermon, delivered out of love and appreciation. It is eloquence.

Under some stuff on my cluttered desk, I found a story about a butterfly written by one of our busiest authors: Anonymous.

Here is a brief summation of it: A man found a cocoon that had a small opening. For hours he watched the butterfly struggle, trying to force its body through the hole. Finally, it just rested, and the man thought it had given up. He snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon and the butterfly easily got out.

Its wings were shriveled and the man figured that they would expand and support the body, but it did not happen. The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It could not fly.

The man didn’t understand that the butterfly had to struggle and strengthen its wings so that it could get through the cocoon’s tiny opening and fly.

The moral is that we need struggles. Without obstacles, we would not become as strong as we need to be, as strong as we might have been.

We could never really fly.

Life is full of struggles, but sometimes we need them to strengthen our wings.

There is a link between the butterfly and the words “Life After Birth.”

I may be old, but I feel eloquence in that truth. See? I was not asleep.

Go ahead, have a nice day. Struggle a little. And fly some.