Butterfly teachings and Thelonius Monk

It was the butterflies, my people say, who brought the first human babies to their feet. The New Ones sat in innocence beneath a tree watching the world around them with eyes of wonder. Everywhere was magic and an overwhelming cascade of life and motion. So they sat there and took it all in.

But Creator had planned more for them. Their destiny called for them to move throughout the world, inhabit it, explore it and someday define it. These human babies were meant to walk upon their two legs and as long as they sat under that tree as mere observers, their destiny could not be fulfilled.

So the Animal People came.

The weasels came and darted and danced around them. The human babies just sat there and clapped their hands and laughed. Then the fox came and in her wily way tried to cajole them into following her. But the human babies merely hooted in glee. The crows came and hopped and danced about in hopes that the New Ones would stand and join them in their dance. But they never moved.

Creature after creature arrived. Each one tried as best they could to entice the New Creations from their seat beneath that tree and each one came up short. There was a seemingly endless parade of Animal People and the human babies marveled at all of them. But they wouldn’t stand and walk.

Then a wondrous thing happened. From across the meadow a brilliant cloud appeared. In the sunlight the colors danced and dipped and shone wildly. The New Ones watched this living rainbow approach and grew excited. The cloud seemed to float in all directions at once and when it came near them, the New Ones laughed like never before.

The cloud of butterflies drifted under the branches of the tree the human babies sat under. They fluttered among the leaves and dropped lower and lower until they were only inches from the New Ones’ heads. They hovered there. The human babies reached out their arms trying to catch them. But the butterflies inched a little higher.

The color was dazzling. The air seemed to tremble with the wave of butterflies. The human babies were entranced. Each time they tried to snare a handful of color they cloud drifted away. They stretched higher. They thrust out their hands. But it was to no avail and when the butterflies danced just out of reach a final time, the New Ones lurched to their feet and raced after them across the meadow.

The Animal people celebrated quietly and then returned to their dens and burrows and nests. The Human Babies never caught those butterflies but they kept on running right into the face of their destiny. Sometimes you can still hear them laughing in the sunshine.

I heard that story for the first time at a gathering of the Three Fires. In traditional times the Three Fires was an alliance of the Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatami nations. When we met there was a week’s worth of activities geared towards the perpetuation of our traditional ways, our teaching ways and what’s called Enendamowin or Ojibway worldview.

With sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, water ceremonies, teaching lodges, talks and social activities, it was a week’s worth of immersion into what it means to be Ojibway, to be native in today’s world. For me, as a storyteller, it was a time to be guided in the philosophy of our oral tradition, to learn the principles and the protocols.

It was like butterflies calling me forward to my destiny.

But sometimes you can get to thinking that the way you come to know, the cultural, spiritual or philosophical way you accept as your own, is the only way that can teach you. That’s true for a lot of people and it was true for me for a while. I came to believe that there was only value in Indian things, that to be myself I needed to surround myself with things and people that were only Indian, only Native.

That worked for a time. I found small glories in the expression of my Native soul and I found people who were generous of spirit and who taught me many things. I saw and felt and heard marvelous things and inched closer to knowing myself. But there’s a destiny for all of us and I was ignoring mine by walling myself in a philosophical and cultural wigwam. As long as I sat there I couldn’t run across the meadow. So the butterflies came again.

My butterflies came in the flow of notes from a keyboard. They sprung from the big hands of a black man who had never seen a wigwam. His name was Thelonius Monk and I heard him play a song called Epistrophy on late night radio. I was standing at my sink washing dishes when the cascade of notes rinsed all my thoughts away.

Monk played with his whole body. You could hear that. He played each note as though he were amazed at the one that preceded it. It was a sensual, challenging music and required full attention to follow it. Once you did though, there was a world of musical shapes, textures, colors and possibilities to reach for.

So I did. I became a jazz fan. I listened and I read about the music.

I read about the people. I read about the history of black music and when I did that I saw where the butterflies were leading me. I learned about field hollers, spirituals, the blues and the call and response choruses of a people chained by ignorance.

I learned that soul is a universal experience. When we clambered to our feet and chased the butterflies we ran to a gamut of experience and teaching.

The world comes begging our attention. It comes in many forms like the Animal people came to the New Ones. We need to rise and follow them. It’s how we learn to laugh in the sunshine.