Colleen Wolpert has been interested in butterflies and moths for more than 20 years. Because she works as a clinical social worker, you might assume that she is only able to pursue her passion after hours. Not so. Besides leading walks at local nature preserves and conservation centers, Colleen has introduced butterflies into her practice.

 

As part of her child and family therapy, Colleen has developed a program called "How to Make Friends with a Butterfly." Children are naturally fascinated with butterflies because of their delicacy, colorful wings, whimsical flight, and beginnings as ugly caterpillars. For second- and third-graders who are anxious, aggressive, or suffering from low self-esteem, making friends with such a magical creature is instantly appealing.

 

Colleen encourages the children to consider the butterfly as the "other" that they will meet throughout life. What does a butterfly want? she asks them? What does it need? The child learns to sit still, to be patient. He sees how his own actions affect others.

 

As a result of this innovative therapy anxious children become proud children, who see that a butterfly stays with them when they behave well. Children who have received mostly negative attention now receive positive attention from peers, family, and teachers. They have become little experts with something interesting to share with others. And they become more observant, more engaged with the world around them.

 

One aggressive six-year-old girl had been working with Colleen for several weeks, learning to control herself and be gentle. Colleen had given the child a butterfly to take home and release, but since a storm was rolling in, the family knew they would have to wait until the following day, so the butterfly wouldn't be injured in the rain. As instructed, the little girl kept the butterfly in its container in the dim, cool basement. That night, when it was time for bed, the mother found her child downstairs checking on her butterfly. She had opened the container and slowly introduced her fingertips into it as instructed. The butterfly had crawled onto her finger and she sat talking to it. Later she told her mother that her butterfly really loved her, but it needed to fly away the next day to be with other butterflies.

 

For many hours, the monks worked, heads bent low over the table. The only sound was the metallic grating of the metal rods they rubbed over the rough surface of the narrow metal funnels, chakpurs, filled with colored sand. Everyone among the silent onlookers knew that, almost as soon as this magnificent Tibetan mandala was completed, it would be destroyed.

 

From July 18 to 22, Keystone College in LaPlume, Pennsylvania hosted The Gathering, a remarkable event launched by author Suzanne Fisher Staples in 2007. For four days writers and artists gave talks and presented workshops on the theme of The Art of the Living Moment. Award-winning nature writer Diane Ackerman was the keynote speaker. I myself was honored to give the opening night address. And the special guests were the monks of Drepung Loseling Monastery, based in southern India since the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959.

 

The monks began making the mandala as part of the opening ceremony, using compasses and chalk to draw the design on a black table. This mandala was dedicated to the Akshobhaya, the deity who stabilizes the mind and transmutes the energy of conflict and aggression to enlightenment for all beings.

 

The monks worked throughout the weekend, and on Sunday morning the last swirl of light green sand was applied to a dark green border. For a few minutes the mandala was revealed, complete, like a pause at the top of an in-breath. Almost immediately the closing ceremony began, with traditional chants and music. In the midst of it, one monk began brushing this intricate work of art and blessing into a mound of sand.

 

The monks then led a procession across the campus to Nokomis Creek, where they ceremonially poured the sand into the flowing water. As Lobsang Norbu, interpreter for the monks, told me, "The monks have put their prayers into the sand. These prayers now benefit all the beings in the water. When the sand reaches the ocean, the water evaporates and falls as rain, and even more will receive these blessings."

 

Watching the creation and destruction of the mandala reminded us witnesses that all things are impermanent: the beautiful and the ugly, the sad and joyful, the sacred and profane. It also taught that we make beauty and offer blessings because it is necessary and vital to do so... and then we let go.

 

 

In Finding Beauty in a Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams describes the time she spent in Rwanda, helping Lily Yeh and residents of Gisenyi create memorials for a place deeply scarred by the 1994 genocide. Lily is the internationally acclaimed guiding spirit of art-making in wounded places, and we are honored that she is also a member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times Council of Advisors.

 

As she is walking one day, Williams is stopped by an old man who talks, pleads, gestures frantically to her. Williams runs to find a translator. They learn that the man's name is Sharamanzi, and he is begging Williams to help him find work and regain his dignity. During the genocide he and his wife Spacious were tortured and all five of their children were murdered. He used to be an electrician, but now he has no strength to do physical work. He wants to be a teacher.

 

Lily and her group, the Barefoot Artists, agree to give him stipend to open a school. It will be called, the old man announces, Sharamanzi's School of Knowledge. It will be held at his house.

 

On the first day of this school, thirty or forty children appear, propping themselves on windowsills, packed together. Sharamanzi shows them his white hair and tells them it is a gift from God. He teaches the children not to steal, not to lie. He tells them to be good to one another and respect themselves, so they, too will grow old.

 

Every day the children come to learn. They call Sharamanzi "Tate," Grandfather.

   

 

  

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