A butterfly is an embodiment of the incredible lightness of love

By Sally McKirgan

My visitor flitted around, landed on the butterfly bush, went away and then returned to land a couple more times and finally stayed for a minute or two. Quickly, I ran for the camera. In thinking about it, I wondered how much a butterfly could weigh. If it sat on my finger, would I feel it? What I think I’d feel is the gift of trust; of acceptance and fearlessness.

Then I wondered what else is weightless and beautiful? How much does love weigh. Love is like the butterfly; it is like God’s trusting gift of total acceptance or like the smile of a baby or small child. It touches you with weightless light, and you feel happy, you feel loved.

Well, I then wondered, how much does hate weigh? It weighs nothing, being a thought like love, but it feels like a ga-zillion tons on the mind and shoulders. It is painful and buries a heart in sticky, smelly guilt, a guilt that does not ever seem redeemable.

Then I wondered how much forgiveness weighs. Like God’s love, the butterfly and hate, it is weightless, but its strength, openness, and courage “lifts” hate from the heart. Its weightless love erases hate, and guilt is cleansed from the heart and mind. Forgiveness comes with the fresh summer air that brings the scent of ripening raspberries. It continues over fields of war, cities of violence, across fields and forests on fire, but is always and forever blessing the world as it innocently looks, waits and judges no one or anything. We are free of the burden of weight we carry when we let go of any condemnation of anyone that has clouded our mind. A mind is a beautiful thing to change.

Let the gift of the butterfly land on your heart as you go about life in this world the mystics call illusionary, and know you are always in the arms of love and that love is real and eternal.

Sally McKirgan, formerly of Ashland, now lives in Olympia, Washington. Her book “The Gift of the Great Rays: Inner Peace Essays,” contain essays that appeared in this column in the now retired Ashland Tidings. She continues to write and paint. You can see her paintings at sjmckirgan.etsy.com.

Want to contribute? Send 600- to 700-word articles on all aspects of inner peace to Richard Carey (rcarey009@gmail.com).