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{ June 25, '98 }
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Morphometasis
Bere woke up early this morning, when sunlight began to rise outside the place she was sleeping. She stretched her legs and wings, and; horror, her wings were gone! Shocked, Bere almost shrieked, but kept herself back. She looked toward her abdomen, and became giddy with fear. An entire pair of her legs were gone!
She continued to survey her surroundings, and her terror increased. She could not walk; her hind legs were disproportionately large for her front legs. Stumbling, she fell more than once, and finally gave up. She heard her sister, Lea, buzz outside the cell. "I'll be right out", she tried to say, but the uncanny noises she uttered shocked her more. She tried again, louder. To her dismay, Bere could communicate with her sisters no longer. In the corridor, Lea buzzed warily, the tone of her wings increasing into anger, and hastily departed.
Bere began to explore this strange body. "I need to prepare new cells for the queen, and harvest field Left-left-right-up-right," she thought. Her new extremities refused to stick on the walls of the cell; she could not climb out of it. She grabbed one of her extremities. "It feels like a larva, so soft" thought Bere. "With a skin like this, I'll be defenseless"
As she became more awake she noticed the color of the wax in her walls was different than how she remembered it. She looked up into the roof of the hive, and could not see the coded messages written with the nectar of special flowers. Her vision had changed. She discovered that she had no stinger. She perceived her scent; it was that of a strange animal she had encountered when she harvested fields: the smell of humans. Bere realized she no longer was a sister to the others; in deep pain, she collapsed into the hexagonal cup of the cell floor. Exhausted and shocked, she lay unconscious for a few hours.
When she awoke, she found a few drops of nectar beside her. "Lea," she thought, "is still my sister." She drank them, surprised at their taste. "How wondrous they make me feel." She pressed her front legs against the cell wall for balance and rose on her hind legs. The edges of her front legs could barely reach the edges of the cell. Her extremities were no longer strong, but she was able to climb out, pulling her hind legs out and crouching at the edge of the entrance.
Her sisters at once surrounded her, angry, ready to sting this "intruder." "Identify yourself!" they demanded. "Sisters, sisters, it's me, it is Bere…" She began, but at the threat of being stung she wriggled out of their reach and began a tumbling run that took her to the edge of the hive. The others flew around her, buzzing, angrily. She did not look back as she left; she would never see her sisters again.
Seldom do we as humans change instantly. How can a person be something for years, and wake up completely new and different one morning? A complete and total change, like Bere's, is fiction, or is it?
A deep mystery to me, when I became a Christian, a new identity overcame me immediately. For a long time, and even today, I still think of things like I used to before this change. But, my "body" is different; so are my vision, my scent, and my defenses. Mine is a spiritual body, with different functions, strength, senses and a beauty all its own.
I doubt "brother" is the word my old friends choose when they think of me. The similaritites between us fade more every day. I now call brothers and sisters the people who have undergone the metamorphosis of believing and loving Jesus with me. We have become new creatures, modeled on the Maker not only physically and psychically, but also spiritually. Our lives are collections of joys and problems that are uniquely ours, but we have a totally new level of life, every morning. We are renewed every time we awake.
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