The Pest Quest

Remember the old Sun and the Moon metaphor? The Moon's light, as you know, is merely a reflection of the Sun. When the earth comes between it and the Sun, it has no light--in the same way, for someone pursuing a relationship with God, when you let something get between you and that relationship, you dim your light. As you know, I hope for you to view some of the unknown features of the scientific world in the same metaphorical light with which so many of us view the Sun, Moon, flowers, and open horizons. Enter the Gypsy Moth, a fat little insect in a wedding dress of fluffy wings.

You know the larvae as "tent caterpillars", I believe. Maybe you don't. Either way, they're huge pests, plant vampires that suck the nutrients out of backyard trees. From their point of view, however, perhaps they are peaceful, idyllic teenagers, children who live together in huge utopias built of a softer version of silk. Their silk first brought them to the Americas, because a foolish scientist wanted to see if he could breed them to produce it commercially. They escaped from his evil slavery designs, and today most young Gypsies live together until the age comes and each must leave the Community tents to take on the Quest.

When a caterpillar youth comes of age, he or she enters a deep meditation state within a pure, simple hermitage. He leaves the comforts of the mobile, spacious life and pledges to develop himself into something greater in his self-made coffin. As we all know, through the miracle of sleep, he undergoes his first trial, the Opening, and emerges as a moth, resurrected like Christ himself, or sometimes, like you. He begins the glory and the challenge of the Flight, and begins to seek the Mate.

During her deep meditation, the Mate has mastered the subconscious art of producing pheromones to draw her Questor Mate to herself. She is his everything, and he is her everything, and their union, like your union with God, fulfills the Quest.

Those outside the Community, the Humans, do not understand, and in evil futility design poisons to shrivel the Communities, de-flight the Mates, or otherwise destroy the Youth, their real enemy. In their giant dark laboratories, through unspeakable tortures worked upon Mates and complex chemistry, they have devised a simple ruse to prevent the creation of the Youth--in short, to prevent the Quest from fulfillment.

The Humans spread pheromones EVERYWHERE. The world may do this to you. The Questor Mates now follow any number of useless signals, and die frustrated or deluded in their old age, never having found true happiness and fulfilled their Quest.

Don't let anyone do this to you. The world will throw things everywhere, things that are often good, that despite all their beauty and wonder, should never get in the way of your Quest. Remember who you are, and the Community you came from, and the re-birth you claimed, and never lose sight of the One Being who is your ultimate goal.