Conversations with a Soul (15 page)

First they must pause for the sun to warm the earth. Below 50 degrees the butterflies cannot fly, so they wait for the temperature to rise before taking to the air in search of nectar, and, eventually, a mate.

Then, they wait for the milkweed shrub to come out of hibernation and play its part in the story. Poisonous to the young Monarch’s predators, the milkweed’s leaves provide security and food for newly hatched caterpillars.

Slowly the temperature rises and the milkweed cooperates, and suddenly a mysterious mating pattern, worthy of any romance story, is set in motion.

The ritual starts with a series of intricate ballet movements as male and female butterflies swirl about each other in mid-air. The dance continues, until, at the right moment, one known only to the participants, the male embraces the female from behind. Clasped together, they tumble to the ground where the male caresses his mate to calm her as he slowly turns her around until their abdomens are pressed together. Then, the male carries his partner to the top of one of the trees in the grove where they stay coupled through the night. The next morning they separate. The male, having completed his part in the saga of reproduction, flies away and dies shortly thereafter.

The female is now the carrier of a new generation of Monarch Butterflies and she must find a place to safely lay the eggs.

She ranges as far afield as the San Joaquin Valley, some 100 miles away. Her mission is to find the protective milkweed shrub. Suddenly she spies one and prepares to give birth. Hundreds of eggs later laid one at a time, on the underside of a leaf, her responsibility is finally complete, and she flies off to join her mate in death.

Four days later, a tiny, ravenous caterpillar emerges, eats the egg shell and feasts on the milkweed’s leaves. After two weeks the caterpillar suspends itself from its back legs and spins a cocoon. Hidden from sight the miracle of metamorphosis takes over and shortly after that the next generation of a Monarch butterfly looks out upon the world.

The newly emerged butterfly inflates its wings from a pool of blood stored in the abdomen, and once again it must wait; this time for the wings to dry and the veins to harden. Then the fragile creature flies off to find a mate and repeat the cycle.

After four generations, each generation living for about a month, the Monarchs have migrated north, back to their Canadian home. The fifth generation is longer lived. Born in late summer, before the chill of fall, the butterflies head south and the story is told all over again.

So, year after year, the Monarchs return to participate in a great saga of life.

I’m not sure if Monarch butterflies play a major role in the biosphere and somehow shape the environment in which we live. I’m told that the milkweed causes the butterfly to taste awful. Not that I have ever tried to eat one, but birds have been seen to spit out the remains after mistakenly ingesting a Monarch. So they don’t provide much in the way of a healthy snack for hungry birds.

Maybe it’s true that a butterfly sneeze could, ultimately, result in monsoon rains in the desert, but I’m not holding my breath! Maybe, they carry and disperse tons of pollen on their cross country flights, fertilizing all manner of plants and trees. I have no answer to any of these questions.

I do know they have the power to work miracles, for they have inspired an international agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada to preserve the environment that Monarch butterflies need to survive. Perhaps this will translate to safeguarding trees and ancient, ancestral butterfly groves. Besides, once these countries begin to talk to one another instead of shouting and threatening, who knows where that might lead?

But I think the real value of Monarch butterflies is to be found, simply, in their existence.

They present us with a pattern of being which is beautiful, romantic, and tenacious and which makes visible the great surging pulse of life that is all about us. Theirs is the gift of surprise, and wonder, as for a few months a year they flutter through our lives and gift us with moments of simple joy.

Divinely superfluous beauty,
is the phrase Robinson Jeffers used.

In one respect the gift of Monarch butterflies resembles those wondrous works of art, crafted in scratch paper and crayons, which small children bring home and, with which we convert the refrigerator into an art gallery. None will hang in the Louvre, yet every visitor to the home is expected to inspect and admire the work. It doesn’t matter that we sometimes have to stretch our imagination almost to breaking point, to recognize the rendition of a boy and his dog. What matters, supremely, is that it is there, evidence of a child growing and internalizing the world about. The drawing is a magical first step in a pattern of interpretation that will grow all through a lifetime, and most important of all, it’s a gift given and received with love and pride.

Of all the possible candidates for nurturing extra-terrestrial life, Tau Ceti, a somewhat nearby star, seems most closely to resemble our sun. On the assumption that there might just be a planet like our earth circling Tau Ceti, on which intelligent life had evolved, that area of our Universe became the focal point for our fist interstellar search for non-earth bound forms of life.

The exercise began by pointing radio telescopes and simply listening in to what was going on. Should the eavesdroppers have identified sounds that indicated some form of intelligent chatter, rather than simply the “scruff” with which the universe is filled, the next step would have been to send off a message, just to let them know we are here and tuned in!

The issue, of course, given that Tau Ceti is two or more hundred light years away, is
what to talk about?
There are not many questions that can wait two hundred light years for an answer.

Our best scientific knowledge, propelled through space for that amount of time would read like a scientific text book
that was written a hundred years ago
and bound in human skin, the parchment
de jour
of the day! We would simply show how primitive and backward we are and, probably, discourage any further dialogue.

We could try to impress our alien listeners with a really complicated algebraic problem, to show how cleaver we are, but that’s hardly the best way to start a friendship.

Lewis Thomas offered the proposition that we start by beaming music, preferably Bach. That seems like a good suggestion, but it was clear to him that scientists would nix the idea in favour of something more technical. So, Thomas suggested a few questions which he argued would always be relevant:

What are your smallest particles? Do you think yourselves unique? Do you have colds? Have you anything quicker than light? Do you always tell the truth? Do you cry?
⁴¹

I like those, especially the last two. Simple but profound!

I think that beauty, relationships, the joy of being and the wonder of discovery are inseparably linked to simple things; questions, conversations, ideas, and they never lose their relevance.

This love affair with simplicity begins early in life.

At his last birthday celebration, my two year old grandson ignored all the whirling, buzzing, high-tech and 'educational' toys in favour of a brightly coloured chunk of wood, with wheels, that could be coupled to another brightly coloured chunk of wood, with wheels. His two year old girlfriend was quick to see the advantages of brightly coloured chunks of wood, with wheels, but he simply refused to give them up. This simple toy opened up all kinds of possibilities and seemed to ignite his imagination in a way the other toys didn’t.

Unfortunately, simplicity frequently becomes a casualty en route to adulthood yet it’s always possible to rediscover the richness of uncomplicated and uncluttered living.

I have gazed in awe at some magnificent sights in different parts of the world, but in truth, I cherish most of all a corner in my own backyard; where I have sat with the people I love and explored simple truths and the breath-taking vistas that open up when we give time to the simple pleasure of wandering through each other’s lives.

Simplicity, at least in the sense in which I want to use the word, has nothing to do with gullibility or naiveté. Rather, it’s a quality of speech and vision that invites the gift of words like,
candour and insight, honesty, reflection and intimacy
. It’s also a way of sharing ideas and experiences that honours
intuition, artistic creativity and vulnerability
.

I’ve noticed that political and corporate word-smiths who live and ply their trade in the murky world of duplicity rely on a complicated, imprecise language, which manages to give the appearance of honesty while avoiding and evading the truth. These practitioners instinctively flee simple talk. Just think of the verbal contortions that follow a simple question, like,
where were you when the waters began to rise over New Orleans?

Damon Keith, a federal appeals court judge once commented that; “Democracies die behind closed doors.” Simplicity, on the other hand, opens closed doors and assumes that honesty is a rich entitlement, and the life blood of democratic institutions.

Another thing I’ve noticed about simplicity is that it tends to slow things down and lingers over issues with which I thought I had already dealt. Simplicity has a way of inviting me to turn back the pages and revisit what I thought I already understood.

It has been well said that, 'we learn too quickly!' Ours is an impatient society molded and fed by a technology that thrives on speed. Our language is peppered with words and phrases that betray our addiction to speed. 'Lightening fast' sells everything from cars to computers. Email, in contrast to 'snail mail' legitimizes the absence of capital letters, and the '
I' 
is reduced in significance to be no more than an assumed servant of hurried 'bites' of information. As far as possible we eliminate commas because commas have always invited a short, reflective pause, and preceded words of explanation. It’s not uncommon to have someone demand that we 'cut to the quick' presumably because they don’t have the time to listen to anything except what they need to hear.

How quickly the need for speed weaves a web about us and like all creatures trapped in a web we become brittle, dehydrated, mere food for the predator that spun the web. Cell phone calls can destroy a moment of intimacy that never returns. Paper work that cannot wait comes home with us and leaves no time for a tousle haired munchkin who waited all day for Dad to come home and who can be so easily bought off with promises about tomorrow. What a difference a simple, 'So tell me about your day,' would make.

I don’t see anything that suggests we are learning to slow down; in fact I think the opposite is happening. Like a pet rat running in a tread wheel, the faster we run, the faster we have to run. (A former colleague of mine once observed that, even if you are the fastest rat in the contest, you still finish as a rat!)

That means that we are going to have to learn all over again that in a fast-paced culture some things cannot survive, because they simply need time.

Wine, relationships, children and the Soul all need time.

Grapes ferment quickly and in about two weeks primary fermentation is completed. Pressing is done in even less time, but it’s the slow maturation in oak that makes great Pinot Noir.

One can fall in love in an instant, and we often do, but it’s the long years that follow where the act of loving someone is redefined to include intimacy, respect and companionship.

And there are no shortcuts.

Couples sometimes joke about having been together so long that they can finish each others sentences. Maybe they can, but that’s the result of impatience. It relies on assumptions, it’s the enemy of simplicity, and it destroys intimacy. Whenever my tale is preempted, I feel thwarted, cheated, because I never initiated the conversation so as to have a demonstration of someone’s razor sharp powers of deduction, nor their brilliant skill in making intuitive leaps.

Instead, I was searching, yearning, for a heart which could love me through patiently listening, even when I suspected they could finish my story long before I did.

Most of us have lots of acquaintances but very few of us have friends. Friendships start with someone becoming an acquaintance but then, if the acquaintanceship is to mature into friendship, it must grow through time, nurtured by deep conversations and simple, shared intimacies.

Too soon childhood is over and unless we invest time during those brief years we never really get to know our children. And the strange thing about those short years is that often the magic moments can only be seen in hindsight, moments that are missed when we live our lives at such a pace that the urgent squeezes out the important.

Then, maybe most significant of all, I have also noticed that simplicity introduces the elements of mystery and wonder to my life, and whenever I’ve refused to dismiss those gifts from my daily repertoire, I have started to see and experience what is not obvious, which, I’ve discovered, becomes the first step to an encounter with the sacred.