The first fluttered in with the breeze and landed gently on my lap through the car window—a small double stemmed, double blossomed yellow flower lay innocently on my lap and elicited sheer delight when I happened to glance down. It had flown in as covertly as it had found its way onto my pant leg. As I looked down, I wasn’t entirely focused on the road, distracted by this tiny token of beauty. Annie Dillard says, ‘this looking business is risky’. She’s right. 

Sometimes, I’m taken aback with marvel at the tiny gifts that pop into the scene unannounced and then suddenly out of nowhere come into contact like a child pulling at the hem of his mother’s skirt to get her attention. The sheer miracle of it all is often missed, but today it was not lost on me. And that in itself was a gift. 

The second piece of manna came down when I was grieving a loss, one that had left a vast hole in my hurting heart. I found myself alone and on my knees, tears pouring their way down my face and succeeded by vociferous sobs that escaped my throat and threw themselves out into the ether. Ugly, wailing, rhythmic sobs that poured out of me as I sat in the sun, behind a glassed window, howling like a wolf who’s lost its mother. 

I closed my eyes and let the sun’s light pour through the glass-stained window over my tear-stained cheeks. As I wept harder and louder, the sun’s rays grew brighter and brighter until all I could see behind my closed eyes was a neon red. Complete and utter radiance beamed down brilliantly to warm my face and seemed to tell me that everything would be ok, that I would be healed, that this too would pass. The louder I sobbed and dug down deep into the pain I felt and voiced it, the brighter the light shone.

It seems that there are precise moments like a break in a symphonic piece where the divine knocks at the door of your heart and whispers or exclaims, ‘I am’.  

In that moment, I was touched by holiness and the result was a deep peace. In that moment, the sun massaged itself into my tears, kneading them into a tender dough. And as they continued to course towards the crevice of my lips, I imagined them crystallising and turning into blue butterflies that fluttered off into the sunlight. I felt my tears that symbolized my pain, turning, transforming into joy, into something beautiful. In that moment, I felt hope and did, in fact, experience healing. A mending of what had been broken. 

I opened my eyes and watched the butterflies fly high up into the sun and then bowed my head in gratitude, rejoicing in my good fortune.