butterflies

After church, we went to the museum to see a special exhibition on butterflies. The exhibit was a combination of art and biiology with microscopes to look through and real live cocoons and butterflies flying about. A guide showed us around, and I saw again how post-christian and catholic austrian society is.

Our guide pointed out that many of the artists use butterflies to portray the soul, however she never mentioned heaven or hell. Instead she only referred to the "pure state of the soul" of the beautiful, white butterflies, or the "mystical threat of death" of the dark moths.

At one point she described a dutch artist who lived in Holland in the 1700's, who had joined a protestant community. She referred to this as "joining a sect". Where the artist would have painted with a clear understanding of heaven and hell and our relation to these through the creator, nowadays our guide had no concept --and almost- no words for this.

the butterfly exhibit reminded me how far apart the post christian european is from the global christian refugee that I work with.