There are many kinds of butterfly bushes. There are the ones we see, with deep purple or white flowers and there are the one with lighter lavender colored flowers that some gardeners consider a nuisance because, like forsythia, it just seems to pop up all over the place. Out of one small bush, there are now six more gracing various places where nothing else would really grow.
What’s wonderful is that neither monarchs, swallowtails, nor bees are choosy. They love them all. And yesterday there were two monarchs moving between all the butterfly bushes. What a lovely sight.
Trying to get a good photo, I wondered how those nature photographers manage. Must be the camera – or patience. Watching butterflies takes patience, an art many of us have lost in the hurry up world that we live in. We need to learn how to have patience, and not just to watch butterflies.
Prayer for the Day
Thirsting for you, O God, dry and weary we search for your presence,
Impatient we are as we feel distressed waiting for a sign;
We know patience is not just sitting back and doing nothing,
But looking to you for guidance in our lives.
Mediating on you in day and night, we remember your constant help,
Teach us patience as we cling to the hope of a better world.
In the name of him who was patient with all of us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit and scientist (1881-1955)
Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears
Barbara Johnson, American writer
I urgently hoped for the Lord; God bent down to me and heard my voice,
And brought me up from the rolling pit, from the deepest mire.
And God set my feet on a crag, made my steps firm, and put in my mouth a new song.
May many see and fear and trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40: 1-4 (Trans. Robert Alter)