In Butterfly Pages

The crack of the spine, the curled corners and the glossy pages opened me to an endless world of butterflies fluttering pinks, purples, oranges and dark blues from their oval-patterned wings.

"Why can't I keep this one, mom?"

"Because it has to go back to the library," she said.

This was my first and only disappointing discovery of the library, when I was 4 years old--I had to return the books.  

Most of my worldly learning and deeper questions were guided not at school but rather through the turnstiles of the highly-reserved adult section at the Guelph Public Library.   Much to the dismay of the librarian, I used to randomly pull titles from different spots, reading the back covers, galloping through the pages to find random sentences, in hopes that I'd absorb the knowledge of all humankind in the two floors of bookshelves.  

The butterflies were quickly taken over by the more refined topics of tangential equations, the physics of batteries, the chemical structure of dish soap, Pablo Neruda poems, Geisha kimono styles and the mystery behind the Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs (which spurred on my daylight fantasies of starting a treasure hunt in my hometown).  

But decades later the butterflies fluttered back into my life when a friend in Mexico said to me "I'm going to call you my Monarch butterfly because you fly here from Canada and stay awhile."

Ah, yes. The Monarch. The species that will travel two generations to go somewhere warmer for the chilly months.    The Monarch butterfly with its black and orange markings! I could almost see the rendering of it in that book I read when I was four, between the pages of the yellow and purple ones.  

Why had this book stuck so vividly in my mind? More than all the books I had perused about worldly science, fine art and mathematical equations? Why do I still yearn to hold the plastic-wrapped hardcover and fall in love with the colours all over again, and keep it for all my life? 

As is the nature with all questions, one eventually discovers the answer. The epiphany came from a visit to my favourite arts library in Mexico in a book about Ancient Aztec poets. I found the little passage that seemed to answer all my curiousity quests: "butterflies symbolize spirit in both Aztec and Christian beliefs."   Butterflies. These creatures who transform from an earth-bound state to one that   dances gracefully in the sky. This unaware Monarch in me, flew down South to a place where Spirit and Wisdom are firmly rooted in commonplace conversation. It was where I cocooned and discovered that soon I'd grow wings.

In the stacks of books on shelves in two different countries, I discovered the simple nature of spiritual living: we are always transforming.   We start off on the ground, attending to earthly matters, unbeknownst to our natures.  Then we feel like things just aren't quite right and we instinctually know there is a whole other way of being. Some of us take time to retreat and grow our wings, discover our new shape within the confines of our physical world.   When the time is right, we come out and fly, feeling a sensation of profound lightness in all that we do.  This is the natural spiritual growth of all living creatures. It is the butterfly who teaches us how to do it.