Blue Butterflies and A Camouflaged Christmas

He had me at blue butterflies.

“The blue butterflies can be found on the sunflowers after the morning winds die down,” the white-haired volunteer said when I first arrived at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior, Arizona. Since I hadn’t been to the arboretum for many years, I decided to see as much as possible of the 300-plus-acres before heading to the sunflowers. I felt compelled to get my money’s worth.

Wallace Desert Garden. Check. The High Trail. Check. Suspension bridge. Check. Ayer Lake. Check. Picketpost Mountain. Check. Multiple side trails of deserts around the world. Check.

I snapped photographs, ate my apple on-the-go, and finished the 1.5-mile main loop. By then, the wind has died down, so I headed to the Hummingbird and Butterfly Garden to see the blue butterflies.

Yellow, orange, and brown-patterned flyers danced around me in the warm morning air currents. Painted ladies, buckeyes, and southern dogface butterflies flitted among the tall sunflowers, unrolling their proboscises into the centers for sips of nectar. 

Where were the blue? The pipevine swallowtails? Had I missed them?

I waited. Paused. Took a break from conquering the day.  

Peering closer, I noticed movement in the shadows. The pipevines! The flyers were hiding in plain sight, their blue iridescence camouflaged by the darkness. Without the light, the swallowtails appeared a boring gray or black, with only a few cream spots along the edges of the opened wings. But when the light caught their tiny scales, the vivid blue unveiled in a kaleidoscope of turquoise, sapphire and navy.

In my hectic pace, beauty almost missed me, or more accurately, I almost missed the beauty found on butterfly wings.

In the book, A Spacious Life, author Ashley Hales describes how the life we ultimately want is not found in unfettered options or by our hustle and hurry. Hales writes, “In the story of grace, the lack of hurry makes room for presence.”

The lack of hurry makes room for presence. I think that would be a good goal this Christmas season, don’t you, to take the time to discover His presence in unexpected places? Like the shepherds?

“Let’s go and see,” the shepherds said to one another after their heavenly visitation. They discovered God’s Son sleeping in a feed box for animals, hidden in plain sight.

In our spiritual practices, presence can be found in prayer, scripture reading, and being together in the yearly celebrations of our faith communities. It is also a skill we can practice as we pause from the hurry of the season to recognize God’s beauty and goodness in our everyday lives, sometimes hiding in the shadows.

Let's pause and remember again the story of God coming to earth as a baby, not wrapped in blue iridescence, but camouflaged in swaddling clothes. What an incredible story of grace! Let’s take time to linger in full sunshine and sing:

Joy to the world the Lord is come…

Let every heart prepare Him room.

This story recently appeared in the SanTan Sun

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