hermit crab

hermit crab: in search of a home that fits.

The last few years have been difficult, learning to live outside the faith community I used to call home. There have been a few different metaphors for this experience: exile, wilderness, outsider. Each has held wisdom for certain parts of this painful process. Another metaphor that has been helpful for me is a hermit crab: a creature who needs a home to shelter its soft and vulnerable parts, who changes it’s home by finding one that is a better fit as it grows and changes.

Seeing these little creatures roll and tumble in the waves during our beach holiday this year, I took some time to watch and contemplate them. I guess I was partly hoping to lean on their wisdom and borrow some of their strength, as I felt myself tumbling and tossed in waves of loss, betrayal and change too. The hermit crabs respond to their own growth, and to the currents and changing tides by cooperating with them. They release what used to shelter, when it can no longer do that. Do they too grieve the loss of a home that is no longer able to provide safety and shelter, I wonder? Are there hermit crabs that resist the invitation that growth brings, and decide instead to stay inside a too-small shell? What happens if they do?

I get still and crouch in the sand, watching them for a long time. My soul speaks and whispers to me “let go. trust the force of nature and Life that’s within you too. you have a Home that’s just right for you, that will continue to grow and expand with you”. These words held a glimmer of hope and promise, that Love is the Home we can always return to. A Home so spacious, so roomy, that everything life-giving finds a place of welcome, unconditional love and true belonging.