Butterfly Magic and the Moody Blues

On August 5, 1993, I was invited to a butterfly garden at the Green Lane Nature Center not far from Allentown, Pennsylvania after attending a composting conference for two days. When we arrived there were hundreds of butterflies fluttering about a profusion of fragrant flowers, shrubs, and herbs. I suddenly felt connected to nature through the wonder of all that was around me. Something was stirring my deepest emotions. I felt like a child again and began likening this scene to be something similar to one right out of Alice in Wonderland. I left that garden determined to create gardens like this for children everywhere. Beautiful butterfly gardens for children of all ages. I'd like to mention right now, that some four years later curiosity got the best of me and I rented the video Alice In Wonderland, which I hadn't seen in perhaps forty years. I wasn't surprised to be watching Alice chasing her white rabbit down into a hole and finding herself in a field of flowers with hundreds of butterflies everywhere. I was surprised though to realize how long our minds can retain an image with its associated emotions and feelings.

On my way home from this garden experience I was listening to a new tape I had just made. It was a mix of songs by John Lennon, Joan Baez, Moody Blues, and other sixties artists. I suddenly realized that there were butterflies in the music that I never heard before. I had made a butterfly tape before I ever had the experience! The music and the image of the butterflies was like an epiphany. A thousand lights all lit at once. My whole life history flashed before my eyes. I suddenly had a brainstorm of an idea to use the butterfly as a symbol for the environment. It would be better than the "save the whales campaign," I told myself. You can't take a whale to a schoolyard, but you can plant a butterfly garden there. Everybody could attract butterflies to their homes, schools, and parks, and have a personal experience with nature like I had.

I had worked in many other organizations such as Common Cause, the Sierra Club, Solar Lobby and Earth Day. I had organized state and local chapters of these groups, but there was always assistance and backing from the national office. Now I had the notion of working backwards, of setting up a national group from the grassroots level with no help or funding. This was sure to be a challenge and I was up for something new. It seemed an impossible dream, but who cared, I somehow knew it could be done, after all, I had all those years of organizing experience. "It's going to be hard" I told myself, but who else will do it?" Did you ever have that feeling? Besides, I was looking something new and positive in my life, and if it just had the potential to help chance the world, how could I say no? My mind jumped to life and soon was full and somewhat pregnant, with the possibilities, potentialities, and probabilities of such an endeavor. I was ready to commit myself to whatever it was.

Suddenly I sensed a feeling of great sacredness and urgency. I broke out in goose bumps. I broke out in tears. I wondered why I was feeling a feeling of sacredness. I never used this word before, not even to describe anything I had done or ever thought I might be doing. Next it suddenly came to me that it was necessary to get my ego out of the process. No room for ego if you're dealing with something sacred. Next an intuitive voice or something deep inside was telling me to stand back and let this whole thing just flow and unfold on its own. I felt this was rather a strange experience, perhaps even mystical. My rational mind told me I was just day dreaming, yet I had the notion to disagree with it. If my vision was true, if it was out there in the universe, it would all manifest itself. It would all just happen if I believed and had faith that it was real. How long it all would take was of no importance. I cried most of the way home, perhaps in mourning for the old self that I felt was now fading and dying, making way for something new that was to be reborn, perhaps as a purifying sacrement to cleanse away what I thought was my past, or perhaps out of nothing less than the sheer joy of feeling so wonderful and radically alive.

When I arrived home I told my wife, "There's a renaissance going on and it's happening all over." My wife asked, What's happening? What are you talking about?" I realized I didn't have a clue, at least not consciously at that moment. Within an hour I told her I was leaving my job. I was shedding my responsibilities as if a butterfly shedding it's skin. I was getting rid of the old in preparation for the new. By the end of the day I had all of the goals for a new organization put down on paper, the Butterfly Gardens Association, or Bee Gees for short. I went from self-employed to unemployed in what seemed like an instant.

Everything began to just fall into place - intuitive, synchronistic, mystical, and magical stuff began happening every day. This went on for three years until I achieved most of the goals I set out to do. I proved the hypothetical can work, and everything became a model of action for other people to follow. This continued to February 1996. I spent everything I had saved and went into debt. It was then I had to put my project into a cocoon. When I didn't work on butterflies and went back to work to earn money all the magic stopped.

In October of 1996 I brought butterflies back into my life and the magic started again. My daughter was dating a boy named George and on Sunday morning I got a call that his father had died. That afternoon, as I was strolling in my garden, I came across a Monarch. It was late in the season for a Monarch. They should have all migrated by now. It must be one of the last Monarchs. I thought about doing a butterfly release for the funeral. In the past I had raised Monarchs for other people who released them at funerals. The butterfly is a symbol of the soul passing on.

The funeral was on Wednesday and I thought this could be the last Monarch I would see, but I didn't want to catch it and keep it imprisoned in a box for three whole days. So I took a chance and let that one go, determined I would find another butterfly on Tuesday. Now on Tuesday I went out looking for any kind of butterfly. The whole day was gone and no butterfly. The sun was getting low in the sky. My wife drove home then and both of us looked around for the last time. We realized that nothing was going to happen. You don't find butterflies at night. I followed my wife toward the house. She went in. I stopped and closed my eyes and the thought was something like, "Please God I need a butterfly by tomorrow." Right after that I knew I would be out in the morning and it would show up. It might be magic, but it would be back. Then I dismissed the thought and feelings going through my head and after five seconds of that I went in the house.

My wife was on the phone with a woman who was telling her that she had just found a Monarch Butterfly at her doorstep. Earlier in the day she had found the Monarch and was concerned because it was so late in the season and was calling people to find out how to care for a Monarch butterfly. She had called me to come pick it up and take care of it for her.

My wife, having been skeptical about all this butterfly magic, was amazed. She had now become a part of this process! I threw on a Monarch T-shirt and went to pick up my Monarch. When I arrived the first thing she said was "I have the same T-shirt!" She also had a butterfly cage in her house and had taken care of them two years ago. I gave her a copy of a book I brought with me, I, Monty by Marcus Bach, because of our similar experiences. The magic of Synchronicity was back and, of course, it was all about butterflies. The butterfly had landed in her yard, the yard of a butterfly lover. She had thought to call me and it was on that very evening when I was especially looking for a butterfly! The magic was back.

I took the butterfly home, made it a sugar/water solution and hand fed it. It became active after eating and flew around the house. I put it to sleep for the night in a dark cage of its liking. The next day at the funeral I released the Monarch while reciting a prayer from Marianne Williamson's book Illuminata about spirit flying free. The butterfly took off straight up in the air and disappeared in a flash. People came up to me later and said it was the most beautiful service ever. People felt that the soul had left on the wings of that butterfly.

George said that he needed to be alone for an hour at the graveside. As I was walking to the car I kept looking back wishing that butterfly would appear again. We left and it didn't appear. I thought, "Oh, well, nice thought. I can't have everything I wish for." On the way home I told my wife that something is going to happen. I'm thinking that the night after I lost my aunt I felt my aunt walking down the hall and that something like that was going to happen.

Here's what happened. George called us when he got home. On his way home from the cemetery he stopped at a light and a Monarch landed next to his car. This was an area under construction, not a place where you'd normally see a butterfly. When the light turned green, the butterfly flew right along with his car and kept pace with him. As the butterfly followed him, he broke into tears, beautiful bittersweet tears. When he got home he opened his door. He saw his father sitting there. I had only felt my aunt's presence the day after her funeral, George said he actually saw his father. Whether you believe George saw his father or not, is not important. What is important is that butterfly meant something to George that absolutely healed his pain. George knew then that his father was with him and always would be.

Butterfly Magic and the Moody Blues

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