Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the Great Gull Himself”, Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after Advanced Speed Practice, “then you are a thousand years ahead of your time.”
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood he thought. They call you devil or they call you god. “What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?”
A long silence, “Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anyone who wanted to discover it; that’s got nothing to do with time. We’re ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly.”“That’s something,” Jonathan said, rolling to glide inverted for a while. “That’s not half as bad as being ahead of our time”.
Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Seagull Speaks Creative Commons Copyright

Friday, September 24, 2010

On Butterflies and Optimism From Small Things!


....something for the optimists...

"He who is faithful in very little things is faithful also in much" 
Luke 16, 10

Imagine you're a caterpillar in the midst of massive death of your cells, your belly is liquefying, you feel terrible and you know you won't last much longer, then your head goes to mush, but wait....the death throes actually are not death throes at all, they are actually the first manifestations of a transformation...metamorphosis....a butterfly emerges from the case and flies away.... 
 
So, yesterday, I sat on my favourite rock looking out to sea, suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a tortoiseshell butterfly appeared from the direction of the sea, fluttered around me in several swoops and circles for a bit and then continued on up over the cliff....I felt in my heart this was a blessing...I was at the right place at the right time,

...and, indeed, last weekend, the laurel hedge outside our house was in full flower (itself unusual...climate change?), but the flowers were absolutely covered in swarms of tortoiseshell butterflies.....I had never seen that before and I have lived here 3 years and a neighbour who has lived here for 20 years, said he had never seen that in all that time...I sat quietly and meditated on that ....

Butterflies are symbols of spiritual transformation and awakening of the soul and are indicative perhaps of labour pains prior to the birth of the new Heaven and the New Earth. It became apparent to me that the many butterflies were actually symbols of collective human transformation and that it is indeed happening despite the fact that it is difficult to believe ...
 
The Universe is always giving us messages to encourage our love, our peace and our optimism to unfold.....even though I may be considered a little mad if I go too far in the possibility that the butterflies are sending messages to me!