The Butterfly began as a journal entry in December 2021 while I was beginning the process of addiction recovery. Over time it took on a new shape as I considered submitting it to the festival, and it will probably change again at some point! I realized that the story in its original form already contained something of joyful hope, patient affliction, and faithful prayer in it, and I tried to bring those elements out in this version; a misguided hope in oneself and one’s own reputation is replaced with a hope of healing, an individual’s suffering is redeemed by the suffering of the healer, and the simple prayer of crying out for help grows into a living prayer of living in community with the healer and the healed.
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