It was Amanda’s desire that her artwork be shared with her family and friends after her services. Her love of sharing beauty with others goes beyond the grave, as we all strive to share in her joy of creating and appreciating the beauty in all God’s creations.
Amanda’s moths were some of her final works. I like to think that Amanda took their cultural significance and related it to her own journey in life: renewal, change, transformation, and rebirth in Jesus Christ.
Please download, print, share, and credit her artwork while sharing her beautiful life of love and service to her Savior.
Sincerely,
Kalyn Cavalier
I’ll leave you with a poem written with care by Amanda’s dear friend Carrie Beyer, penned in honor of her life and her moth collection:
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BEHOLDING
for Amanda
The night the moth came to rest
in our circle of porch light
I couldn’t keep from gazing at its wings—
colors I had no names for—
ochre, azure, seaglass
not enough.
I was only one of a huddle of bodies
inside a window. We’d
shared a meal together, ladled soup
into one another’s bowls,
spooned it to our mouths
while just outside the moth glistened
where it bathed in porch light—
almost too much for this earth.
Not wanting to look too long
at a creature so stunning
I closed my eyes
so I could feel its light, palpable
as a teacher who might cup our hands
around a lump of clay
showing us how to create.
The moth, once formless,
now spun into this dusk, this flesh, this feathered
precision, this arc, this aching grace—
The moth came to the light,
once wingless, now imago
nurtured in darkness,
a whorl of wing tails
to tendril bats away,
legs a breath on the windowsill.
Some things we cannot touch—
love shaped to the paint of wings.
For just this night, the wings rested,
and four dark blots like eyes
upon the wings, watched
as if to ask: do you know how beautiful you are?
With eyes and eyes, the moth
could see us whole. And with winged eyes
its flight could raise the beauty
grown in darkness.
Inside, we held one another,
our bodies saying what we could not:
be with me—
stay with me now in this brief light.
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