On Sunday I stopped at a convenience store so my son could use the ATM. After he got his cash he stood looking down at something on the sidewalk while the other shoppers rushed around him, some obviously annoyed.
When the coast was clear he came back to the car and said that there was a butterfly on the ground that seemed unable to fly.
Thinking that the butterfly was probably injured and that a convenience store sidewalk was a really awful place to die, I got out of the car to see what I could do.
The butterfly was big and beautiful and very yellow. He didn't seem to be injured or at least if he was we couldn't see how. But he there was no doubt that he was not about to fly. I watched him crawl around in circles for a moment, while the Sunday shoppers streamed back and forth, and then I put down my hand and let him crawl onto my palm. His little feet were gentle and soft.
Walking around to the side of the store we were surprised to see that someone had made a small landscaped garden in the area between the shop and the lot. So I put the butterfly down on a bush, even though he seemed as if he wanted to stay right there on my hand.
We drove the next few blocks to the 6th Street Flea Market wondering if the butterfly might have not been injured at all but simply new to life as a butterfly and not quite ready to take flight. I told my son about a cocoon I had kept as a child and how the moth emerged and sat for a long time on the edge of the open jar as if he didn't quite know what to do.
I had thought the moth was sick so I gave him bits of broken leaves to eat and a soda cap of water and laid down on the grass and waited. After what seemed like forever, he finally spread his wings and flew away, small and brown and sturdy against the bright blue summer sky.
Now, almost half a century later, my son and I couldn't help wondering if the big yellow butterfly might just have needed a bit of time to get his bearings. It was a breezy day and probably not the best time for a first attempt at flying. Or maybe he had been flying and got tossed about in the storm the night before.
Either way, we speculated, he might have remembered his old safe caterpillar life and decided to take a time out on the ground.
We arrived at our destination and got out of the car. At that very moment, a bright yellow butterfly came dipping and weaving across the windy parking lot. As he passed almost directly in front of us, I had the distinct impression that he was saying, "Look at me, I've got it."
My son and I exchanged a look. "I'd like to think that's our butterfly," he said.
"So would I," I said feeling surprisingly certain that it was. And I felt happy for the butterfly and happy for us.
Every year since I've began this blog on August 22nd 2010 I write a Happy Birthday Blog post.
Because the blog and I happen to share the same birthday this has always felt right.
For me, birthdays are meaningful occasions. They are a time to take stock, a time to think about where we are in life and where we have come from.
It makes sense to include the blog in this because, in many ways, the blog marks the true beginning of my spiritual journey. Not because I wasn't interested in spiritual things before but because there was nothing to keep me on track, pre-blog, nothing to keep me from drifting away and forgetting who I was and what I wanted to do.
So every birthday I think about how far I've come and then I think about what comes next. And it's occurred to me that what's next this year isn't really a new thing, just a better approach to the old things.
I'm especially interested, at this turn of the solar wheel, with hands on creativity and healing - though writing is still very much part of the mix.
The best example of this is my renewed commitment to my online shop. This is people centered because two of my boys are interested in participating - and even if they aren't as committed as I am, I can still do art and talk to people at the same time. It is people friendly because I can take my items to my tarot reading events and possibly do other events and interact with even more people.
The best example of this is my renewed commitment to my online shop. This is people centered because two of my boys are interested in participating - and even if they aren't as committed as I am, I can still do art and talk to people at the same time. It is people friendly because I can take my items to my tarot reading events and possibly do other events and interact with even more people.
I'm planning to make soaps, candles and clearing items and have been learning about aromatherapy and healing in hopes of adding that into the mix, I'd also like to do more jewelry and get back to sculpting.
And here is the big thing - I think that I can finally ignore my inner critic long enough to be productive!
And here is the big thing - I think that I can finally ignore my inner critic long enough to be productive!
Doing that with my writing is a little harder but I did post some of my work the week of the Wilkes Writer's Conference - which was a very big step for me. And I'm going to be posting a few excerpts here as well.
I'm zeroing in on what I want to write about which is another very important step because the critical me tends to shoot down ideas before they have a chance to mature - or even crawl.
And I owe a lot of this to the blog which really means that I owe it to the people who read it. Because without you it would have only been a matter of time until I forgot that there is more to life than what floats on the surface.
Thank you, for being there <3
I like science and don't spend nearly enough time thinking about it. It surprises me that so much of it is metaphysical in the popular sense of the word. Here are a few very basic facts on the frequency of color:
- Frequency refers to the number of times light passes a given point which can be thought of as vibration. Colors with long wavelengths have a low frequency. Colors with short wavelengths have a higher frequency.
- Red has the longest wavelength and lowest frequency of any color in the visible human spectrum. It has a low vibration or frequency and less energy than other light. Red represents earth and courage and the life-force. It is associated with the root chakra.
- Redder than red refers to a red whose wavelength is too long for us to see. Infrared light exists beyond the color we perceive as red.
- Violet has the shortest wavelength which translates into a very high frequency. This color contains the shortest waves we can see. It also contains the most energy. Ultra-violet is a very high vibration violet not visible to the naked eye.
- Color exists which has a higher frequency than violet. It is invisible to humans and known as bluer than blue. It interests me that blue corresponds to wisdom, spirituality and communication. Blue is significant to me personally, as is red so that made the outside the human spectrum stuff interesting to me. For more on my personal dream experience with color symbolism please see the following entry: The Spirit Dream
- There are many other wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum that which aren't visible to humans. The chart above illustrates this fact as well as all others mentioned.
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Chart created by Carl Fredrick. Creative Commons License.
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