Butterfly… Butterfly, Little Flutterby…

It’s Fall… and with it, fluttering butterflies …

Flutterby’s, as my little girlies used to say… migrating south. I don’t think I can ever remember a time when I have seen so many flutterbys… Tender and fragile, little Flutterbys… you flit, float and fan a kaleidoscope of colors. How glorious to behold! I drink it in as if parched from a long desert track…

There is only one way to adequately describe the dance of the butterfly, flutterby, and it is with poetry. If I were a poet, I would save the best words for these little bugs. Alas, it escapes my ability, but there are others who have given us a legacy to remember.

“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” ~Hans Christian Andersen

Love is like a butterfly: It goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes. ~Unknown

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.
~Robert Frost, “Blue-Butterfly Day”

I’ve watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! – not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
~William Wordsworth, “To a Butterfly”

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. ~Charles Dickens

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~Author Unknown

Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake – as almost all hats are. ~Nikolaus Laszlo, Nora Ephron, and Delia Ephron, You’ve Got Mail

And what’s a butterfly? At best,
He’s but a caterpillar, at rest.
~John Grey

The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign. ~Primo Levi

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. ~Carl Sagan

The green grass and the happy skies
court the fluttering butterflies. ~Terri Guillemets

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. ~Chuang Tzu

Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly. ~Andre Gide

Do ye not comprehend that we are worms,
Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly
That flieth unto judgment without screen?
~Dante Alighieri

Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time. ~Deborah Chaskin

Butterflies are beautiful. They fascinate us… to contemplate the grace and beauty of flight, unfettered. But looking beyond fragile powdered wing dancing in the bright sunshine, Butterflies fulfill their purpose. I wonder if I were of the same species, would I still fight against purpose… refuse to awaken in His time… and continue to ignore the call to consecration…

Gorged and obese I am… Feeding ever feeding on the succulent delicacies from Gods’ hand… feeding and feeding, but not to share, but to horde, for self, my gluttonous self. They cry out in hunger, loneliness, and in fear of the darkness. Hundreds of thousands starving, unengaged, untouched ethne’s… never to taste Your extravagant honey… to experience just a drip of sweet nectar on the tongue.

Evermore, I sit… until skin splits and yet longing to completely emerge from the chrysalis cocoon… as that delicate and graceful flutterby…fanning endless praise to God. S.D. Evans