The butterfly effect, also called sensitive dependence on initial conditions, terminology derived from chaos theory, is a concept also described in an ancient Chinese saying. "If you want to know how things will turn out, examine their beginnings." It is at the beginnings of things that motives are most clear.

So how can it be that the breath of a butterfly's wings might set off global change, whereas the huge turbulence of thousands of jet engines of planes taking off at all the world's airports would not? The answer lies in the purity of intent as contrasted with the random meaningless act. The world and all within it respond in time to the purposeful nudge of gentle heart.

It is easy to be distracted and caught up in meaningless random stuff, to be sucked into the engines of huge airliners and be spewed out as more insensitive sameness of civilization. The Wisdom of the hands is a different path. As the world spins with huge centrifugal force, the hands are centripetal, calling us back to center. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, take your hands out for a test. Put them to use. Make something. Get a grip and see if you can grasp my meaning.

Several years ago, I was sitting with my wife on our porch swing, and I was thinking about a book I had read called "The Black Butterfly". In the book, the author described his moment of "awakening" when he saw a black butterfly and a white butterfly mating in a field. He perceived in that moment the oneness of all things and felt an elevation of senses that some have called enlightenment.

So as I sat on the swing with my wife, I wondered what the offspring of those mating butterflies would be. I was thinking shades of gray, when out of the corner of my eye, a moth fluttered into view. It landed on my left arm. It was black with white polka dots and fuzzy orange antenna. I studied it closely as I explained to my wife my thoughts prior to its arrival. Jean got up to go into the kitchen to get ice tea, leaving me in contemplation of the funny moth on my arm. When Jean returned, I looked up and then quickly back to my arm and it was gone.

Can such funny things happen in answer to our thoughts? There are forces and principles at work in the world that are beyond our comprehension. And perhaps within those forces are the powers through which the breath of a butterfly's wings might be expressed to an endangered planet.