In the Sweetness of Silence
Have you ever been graced by the beauty and majesty of a butterfly? Most of us have seen them, some have captured them as children and then released them to watch them fly away. But have you ever visited a butterfly sanctuary, sat in the midst of all that fluttering beauty in every size, shape, and color conceivable?
A friend sent me a beautiful email about someone visiting the butterfly pavilion in Scottsdale this week. Yes, I have been there with my grandsons several years ago. But the one that captured my heart was just north of Niagara Falls in Canada. My dear friend Ila and I were driving from her home north of Toronto, south, to eventually end up in Herkimer NY. One of the amazing places she took me to was a huge butterfly pavilion, unlike anything I had ever seen before. Enchanting gardens, butterflies everywhere and yes, on me (this blue one landed on my blue shirt and there were two on my back). Ila was wearing red plaid and two reddish colored beauties landed on her back.
My mind has scrambled for a positive message to send out this week. I have shared in my other writing and share in my books, how I have danced with depression most of my remembered life. When Kay’s email came, I read it over and over, remembering the butterflies, not just at the pavilions but in my world, in the yard, on a bush, at my sacred waterfall I call Heart Falls. If you watch the video on the homepage of my website, I am gifted the presence of a small butterfly basking on the rock just behind me as I share my story. When I got up to leave, I saw it and moved slowly and with the intention not to disturb it until I was called to reach out to it, not for it but to it. I slid my finger gently towards it, resting there on that rock and it allowed me to slide my finger under its gently moving wings. Have you ever experienced the “kiss” of a butterfly wing on your skin? It is a message divinely sent in the very silence of such a moment.
I am blessed…Kay’s email brought that memory to the forefront of my mind this past week and people in my neighborhoods are posting butterfly pictures in the Nextdoor App. I am blessed when I can be in silence, to be able to “hear’ things I often miss in the noise of everyday living. I watched my own video yesterday in the silence of my office while hubby was gone to the dentist and the dog was napping by the open door, breathing in fresh air after a wonderful rain. I had watched a TV show where a mother lost her child and it brought back memories that lie dormant in the recesses of my heart and in that silence, in the fresh, rain-cleansed air, I heard, “I was the butterfly, Mom.”
I am filled with what I will call hope, as his messages have been few and far between in my chaotic, noise filled world of revving engines, and motorcycles racing off stop signs, the constant voices traveling through the house from the giant TV, and the slamming doors of returning neighbors, voices across acres, and dogs barking.
That sweet sentence, “I was the butterfly, Mom,” can bring me to tears or bring a smile to my lips depending on where I am in my day, dancing with hope or succumbing to sadness. Life, right? We live it or we don’t, but hope… now that has to go on or what is the point of it all?
From the email Kay sent me, it is written that “Václav Havel – the dissident, and later president, of the Czech Republic – wrote, “Hope is not a prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”
This kind of hope goes beyond whatever the future may hold, or even whether a future can be expected at all. Hope, Havel writes, “is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
Kay’s note continued, “Hope like this, springs from values. Clearly, it goes beyond facts, but it doesn’t turn a blind eye to them. It’s a hope you can hold onto and live by, even in times of hopelessness… genuine hope is a confidence in an unseen reality, a bigger picture that puts a present situation in a new light.
“Confidence in Daybreak modifies Dusk,” Emily Dickinson wrote.
For me, hope is why I can go to sleep at night (when sleeplessness leaves the room). It is a knowing I have, a confidence if you will, in something unseen, indescribable, The Great Mystery that allows me to wallow in my sadness but return to joy at a keyboard, beneath billowing clouds in a cerulean blue sky after thunder and lightning have cleared the air and washed the earth.
As Kays note ended with, “genuine hope is a confidence in an unseen reality, a bigger picture that puts a present situation in a new light. It relies on a larger vision and understanding, knowing that the sun will rise, the seed will bloom, the chrysalis will become a butterfly.
And so, I remember looking into the eyes of the butterfly on my shoulder, seeing the ones on Ila’s back, in Kay’s letter, on Neighborhood posts, and I remember the “kiss” of the butterfly’s wing on a warm rock listening to the song of a waterfall.
May this Spring bring you visions of butterflies in all colors and shapes reminding you of the renewal of your own indominable spirit and the resurgence of hope every morning when you give gratitude for rising, once more, as my dear mama Granny Annie says, ‘forked side down’.
Blessed be the butterflies in our lives and the messages they deliver in a moment of silence.
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Vicki Dobbs is a bold and adventurous warrior walking a path of heart to manifest spirituality in everyday lives. She opens existential gateways for individuals to face their challenges and embrace these tests as the great teachers that they are.
Her goal is to see everyone walk in beauty and balance every day of their lives empowered by the voice of their own authentic truth.
Through Wisdom Evolution and Sacred Wisdom Workshops, Vicki creates opportunities for others to make deep personal changes through experiential classes, ceremony, sacred art and story. She endeavors to inspire others to create their lives intentionally. Vicki is an Inspirator of everyday awareness, an Instigator of spontaneous stories and a Connoisseur of Creativity. Gratitude and grace sprinkled with humility and humor are the medicine she brings to the world.
As an Elder, Teacher and Entrepreneur, Spiritual Coach, Ordained Minister and Crafter of Sacred Art and Tools, Vicki perceives life’s journey as an ever-upward spiraling ascension of the human spirit leading her to wisdom, wholeness and authenticity.
Her experience includes being trained in the Harner Method of Shamanic Counseling and the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition of Cross Cultural Shamanism. She is a Graduate Teacher and Mentor with the Lynn Andrews Center For Sacred Arts and Training and has been the Administrator and Writers Guide for Writing Spirit, the School.
Vicki is also an Artist of the Spirit Certified Spiritual and Energetic Life Coach, a Graduate Mentor in the AoS program and a founding member of HeatherAsh Amara’s Warrior Goddess Leadership Team and Facilitator of the Warrior Heart Practice.
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