What must be the last butterfly of the year falls from the sky like a rose pedal. He flaps his white wings around the row of evergreens that line our little backyard. He's probably a moth, but I'll make him a butterfly for now. After all, he's the last one of the season. I've never seen a November butterfly in a four-season climate.
Opposite the evergreens, a thousand berries bead a holly bush. Platoons of leaves do their best to copy the butterfly, launching themselves one by one from the Willow Oak, navigating the breeze until they reach their burial ground.
A chorus of chickadees and an anxious cardinal sing through this autumn afternoon, jumping from branch to branch past squirrel nests, never once stopping to notice the bluing sky or the faint, half-carved moon.
I was going to write to you today about spirituality and religion – how, for caregivers, the first one seems a lot more important to me than the second; how religion seems to divide us and spirituality seems to unite us; how we all share the same soul when we're carrying Love to heal someone in pain.
As you sit a moment, the computer screen glowing into your perhaps-tired eyes, I wanted you to know that I intended to write to you about what the writer Karen Armstrong said on NPR on Sunday. "Feeling with someone in pain is better than feeling sorry for them."
But then those winter-white butterfly wings caught my eye.
Rev. Erie Chapman
(Note: The photo, above, is by Frank Kirchner)
Journal of Sacred Work 
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