1 | The Butterfly Effect

 

Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a Co-Finder of the Table Collective.

This is the very first episode, its really a Prequel to the whole podcast, and I’ve called it “Butterfly Effect”. But I want to start by saying something really obvious.

Origins of Art and Religion

Human beings exist. Human beings have almost universally exhibited astonishing creativity. Human beings have almost universally reported having spiritual experiences. And human beings have almost universally developed ways to share their creativity and spirituality with others.

In my view, those simple observations describe the soil from which the artistic and religious dimensions of being human have sprouted and grown. In fact, I have come to see religions as a particular form of artistic expression, in which human creativity and spirituality combine.  And the same is true looked at the other way: the arts are a form of expression of the spiritual essence of human beings, just as religions are. 

I want to add, right away, two comments about that opening statement. First, I have not always thought this way about the sources of spirituality and creativity. And by the way, if you are curious about who this “I” is, about me, there are two places where you can get more of my bio and some of my background: on the website of the Table Collective, a non-profit I am part of, at tablecollective.art, and in a book of mine which is also titled The Cow Behind the Barn…just search Kevin Caldwell and that title)…

Ok, my second comment: nothing I said in my opening comments is anything like as “simple” as it may seem…just take “human beings exist”, or just the word “exist”…and then ask Buddha, or Muhammad, or William Blake, or Tagore, or…and the list can go on…ask them what it means to say someone or something exists?

 

A Prequel 

This episode is a Prequel to my whole project, and my whole project is packed into that opening statement about humans and creativity and spirituality and art and religion and what it means to be human. I am 66, and these are some of the big things I have been curious about for a long time…and explored and thought about deeply for a long time.

That is why I described the podcast by saying…

“…I explore art, religion, the universe, the mystery of the Divine, and what it means to become more fully alive as human beings…”

Creativity is an expression of spirituality, and vice versa, so, again, I have begun to explore the idea that religion might actually be a form of art, a way that human beings have collaborated over time in different places to be able to share spiritual experiences together through spoken word, poetic wisdom, music, visual art, shared actions… 

And in so doing they have imagined different ways of seeing who we are, the world we live in, the nature of the divine (or its absence) and what it means to be fully alive, fully human.

I have observed, I am sure you have too, that people tend to have a few ways of processing and thinking about the variety of worldviews that religious founders have come up with…and artists too for that matter. Some see NONE of it to be true, some conclude there must be one true one, some assume they are all different ways and each of equal value. I have been sensing for a long time that maybe there is a different way…I have been searching for years for a way to “explore out loud”, “explore in public” that different way, the connection of art and religion, creativity and spirituality, and to do so by creating something that was itself a mixture of these…a different genre for talking about and experiencing religion and art. 

 

Religion as an Art Form

If religion is an art form, then the great founders might be like spiritual creatives, and the great time tested texts might be like ground breaking expressions of spiritual creativity …the spiritual insights and creativity these have captured and offer us have changed the way human beings pursued the art of being human…

I guess to explore all this in public it seemed to make sense to use my own art to express spiritual things. Which makes it sound like I have it pretty well charted out. 

Truth is, I don’t really know exactly what I am making. I am not sure who it is for, or if anyone will be listening on the other end. And I don’t have a clear plan for how I will design it all. 

 

Three Admissions

Let me comment a bit on those three admissions.

First, I don’t know what I am making because I am not sure that this is really a podcast. I thought I wanted to write drawing on several decades of digging into ancient languages and texts like the Bible and Quran and then later, the Gita, and Buddha’s teaching and later still, the Tao Te Ching, and Granth.  

I have an academic background that prepared me for that, and years living in other cultures. In 2013 I started writing that book, and really tried. Now its is 2024. No book. The book just didn’t cooperate, didn’t want to come out…eventually I began to realize something else was brewing.

I have come to see that the best way to explore all this is to share it like an artist might. My art is words and music…poetry and song, poetry in songs. A book can’t really offer that. I wanted a form that would be more like a living, audio mural, a long poetic narrative interspersed with song and music, and insights from religious texts, which are also works of art in their own right. 

The podcast “form” seems to offer a “genre” with the most possibilities for weaving it all together, although I am not sure this podcast really is a “podcast” in the way others are.

The second admission: I am not sure anyone, will ever listen to this. 

I am being sincere here. From this side of the mic I am not sure there will ever be a “you” listening on the other side! 

And finally: I am not at all sure I know how I am going to do this. So I am curious to find out what will happen…which is part of what approaching this as a creative work is all about as well. 

I have started this over and over….in my head and my imagination. I have tried to map out a plan and arrange things in some sort of order. But I don’t see much beyond maybe the next two or three episodes (and even those I assume will change dramatically when I get ready to record them).

 

So…

                  If I don’t know what I am making, why make it?

If I am not sure who, if anyone, is listening, why keep talking?

If I don’t know how I will map out whatever it is I am doing, why keep doing it?

An answer that addresses the first question, is that I can answer in the way I think most artists would answer. Artists almost always begin to create without a full idea of what “it” will be at the end. The creative process is, well, a process…and the thing being created is in many ways a participant, and can only reveal itself to us as we work on it, shape it, listen, mold, sketch, erase, restart.

 

The Podcast: My Studio

I am going to treat the podcast as if it were my art studio, and every episode like a new canvas or a sketch pad. Since I am not a visual artist, my brushes are spoken words, and music, songs, and poetry. The paints I use are mixed from my experiences of life and other cultures, from mistakes and discoveries, from my studies of religion and religious texts, and from my music and songs and lyrics and poems.

And episode by episode I expect to discover more about what I am making, as I make it. Like I said, I am curious about what is next.

As to the second question…if no one is listening why keep talking…I suppose I keep at this because I am convinced that what we do matters and makes a difference whether anyone else knows about it or not. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, I am not sure what sound it makes, but it falls. And it matters.

Because I believe in butterfly effects. 

 

Butterfly Effect and Butterfly Wing

The early theoretical work involving what we call the butterfly effect was undertaken by mathematicians and physicists who focused on demonstrating that very small events and actions, could have significant impact on weather patterns. Their studies contribute to what is known as chaos theory. In 1950, mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing noted: "The displacement of a single electron by a billionth of a centimetre at one moment might make the difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later or escaping."

Later, mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz described the scientific nature of this using originally the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado being influenced by the wings of a seagull. By 1972 he had been persuaded to switch to the metaphor of a butterfly wing to make it more poetic.

However, early on as the idea was being explored in the world of science, this notion that a tiny butterfly could have monumental effects had already been explored in the world of art:

Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story, “A Sound of Thunder” narrates the way that the death of one butterfly could directly affect historical events. 

Similarly, the  way that the movement of the wing of a tiny creature could result in massive impacts shows up in 1962, in a children's book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. A character in the books says,

"...whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world." 

So, we see scientists and artists, each in different ways trying to describe the same reality…I find it fascinating that scientists were struggling to find metaphors, and as such they were communicating like artists, to describe what the science was telling them. And as an aside, that is akin to my effort here: I want to communicate like an artist about things that sometimes only get expressed from the left side of our brain…with reason and logic…

I will put some of my cards on the table here: I won’t demonstrate here why I believe this, but I believe the butterfly effect is true both physically (as illustrated in my prior comments) but psychically. If everything is interconnected in such a way that a tiny wing can affect everything else, then might the tiniest wish also have an effect?  

If so, then each person’s inner journey matters to the universe, not just actions but intentions, thoughts, wishes. Each person’s cultivation of a false self, of estrangement and pride and half-truths and outright hatred adds to the winds of devastation and destructive force that grow drives the waves that become the psychic tsunami’s wreak havoc upon humanity, and the world.  

But, conversely, each person’s journey of progressive cultivation of their true fully alive self sets loose a breeze that, no matter how tiny it may begin, will swell into waves that grow into psychic tsunami’s that bring life in all its fullness to humanity, and to the world.

To put it another way, I am convinced that the cultivation of our spiritual and creative and relational human essence will enable us to be more alive and aware and awake as human beings, and thus become if I can say this, “better humans”…and better humans will mean better humanity and a better humanity will mean, well wow, it would mean a LOT for every other animal, plant and species and  type of “thing” we can imagine.

In some ways this podcast is a result of my intention to move the wings of my words in the hope even such tiny actions as a thought can be a source of good. And that is the answer to my question about why I keeping trying to do this, even if no one else is listening, right now, in this very moment as I record my voice saying these words, and even if there will never be a “you” someday listening as you drive or walk or work out. 

I am flapping my wings as an act of faith, an act of hope that somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone will feel a breeze that is light and balmy and warm, like the movement of soft sun on skin, the sound of rain on leaves, fresh air, life, hope.

At this point, I want to express all of that in a different way, not with more words, but through my music, in my song “Butterfly Wing”…

 

Butterfly Wing

They say that all it takes is the wing of just one butterfly

To change the course of time, in a broken life

A million miles away, a million miles away, a million miles away, oooh, a million miles away

 

They say that all it takes is one gentle whispered word

And even though it not be heard, it can still do its work,  

A million miles away, a million miles away, a million miles away, oooh, a million miles away

 

Shadows fall around like acid rain 

Soak into our souls, leave bitter stains

Pouring out from inside hearts long shattered

Can my tiny soul do anything that will matter

From a million miles away, a million miles away, a million miles away, oooh, a million miles away

 

They say that all it takes is the wing of just one butterfly

To change the course of time, in a broken life

And they say that all it takes is a gentle and whispered word

Even though it not be heard it can still do its work

A million miles away, a million miles away, a million miles away, oooh, 

A million miles away, a million miles away, a million miles away, oooh, 

A million miles away 

And they say that all it takes is the wing of just one butterfly…

Tiny wings and whispered words that can have their effect a million miles away.  

By the way, should you want to listen to the song again and not have to relocate it within the podcast, you can find my music on any streaming platform, just look for me, Kevin Caldwell.

 

Discover What I am Doing by Doing It

Now, what about the third question, why keeping doing this if I don’t know what exactly how, not sure what the plan is? I suppose it’s because experience tells me I will only discover what I am doing if I start doing it before I know fully what it is.

 

There was a book entitled “We Make the Road by Walking”, which records a weeklong dialogue between Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, two of the most prominent thinkers on social change in the twentieth century. In it they discuss together the nature of social change and empowerment (and a shout out to my good friend in the UK, Phil Simpson, for continuing to use the phrase in that title to encourage me and so many others over the years! Thank you Phil).

For me, just that title provides the inspiration that I may not know what I am doing until I get done and then turn around and look back. So, the way forward is to just start. 

Yesterday I was crawling on the floor helping my 2-year-old grand-daughter look for something. We looked under couches and bookshelves and tables and chairs. We never found what we were looking for, but we DID find a LOT of other things, things we didn’t know were there when we began our search.

It is amazing what we find when we don’t find what we thought we were looking for. 

So, just because we don’t know exactly what we are doing or exactly where we are going, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t begin.

I trust that beginning without knowing where I am going does not mean I won’t arrive at the place I was intended to reach, even if I didn’t intend it.

Because again, 

It is amazing what we find when we don’t find what we thought we were looking for. 

Through creating this podcast I am eager to find things I didn’t know I was looking for…and I realize I may not find what I thought I was setting out to discover or create. 

But of course, even the first step of our feet has to be taken in some direction. You can’t steer a parked car. One must do something, in some direction, even if the road we end up making is not the one we expected. 

I will try to describe what I think I am crawling on the floor to find. 

The map I do have, such as it is, includes religion and spirituality, and art and creativity, and humanity and what it means to be fully alive, and aware, and awake, and how we might experience more of that, and on the journey these will all be stirred together, mixed, interacting, and swirling together, tangled, inseparable. 

 

An Artist’s Way to See Religion and Art and More

Since I am trying to create a different way, an artistic way, to express all this, each episode will draw from all the paints, I have in my studio…though I paint with words and sounds. There will be insights from the texts of various religious heritages and from life experiences and from the world of art and it will all get packaged in and around my own creative work, poetry, music, song.

But I suppose that my deepest I hope is that every episode will blend those things but also invite us into ways of experiencing them…experiencing creativity and spirituality and connection and more of life. I hope I will experience that. I hope you will.

As I said, I don’t have it all mapped out yet. In fact, I don’t plan to have completed creating a next episode while in the midst of recording the episode that will precede it. That means I don’t really know what will come next. In other words, I expect to be barely a step ahead of you.

I am coming to the end of this first Episode and have not said anything about the title, Cow Behind the Barn…Maybe I should?

My grandmother took up painting at an advanced age and her first attempt was a painting she called the cow behind the barn. It was a typical beginner’s effort in many ways, though I think her use of color was striking, but the main feature of the painting is that while there is a barn, there is no cow. Because, as is obvious from the title, the cow is behind the barn. Something that is such a vital part of the whole picture is actually not visible. It remains mysterious, hidden, but it is there (or so we are told). 

I take it as a metaphor for the mystery of what life is about, what it means to be human, of the mystery of creative inspiration so prevalent among us as humans, and also for me, especially, a metaphor of the divine mystery. 

I hope that this journey, as uncertain as I am about what it is and how it will take shape, might help us to cultivate a way of seeing ourselves and the world, and a way of being ourselves in the world, and a way of healing ourselves and the world…of becoming more alive, and more aware, and more fully awake.

 

Opening Our Eyes

As I begin to bring this episode to a close with a poem that functions in a way like an “intention” for the whole project. It is my poem “Eyes Open” from my book of poems and lyrics and essays, titled The Cow Behind the Barn: Poems, Songs, and the Art of Being Human.

As a poem, it really is about an intention to be more aware, and more awake…to have open eyes. 

Because, to find the cow behind the barn means having our eyes open. And that sometimes requires that we consciously determine to open them and keep them open. 

This is a statement of my intention to crawl on the floor and find things with our eyes open. 

So, I offer the poem as a kind of meditation, an invitation to see in new ways and to pay attention on purpose.

 

Eyes Open

My eyes open, close, open, close
A million moments upon moments
Eyes open, eyes close
Another million blinking moments blind absent gone
Eyes open, eyes close
A world is passing unseen untouched unlived
Eyes open, eyes close

Eyes open 

Eyes open
Unblinking burning begging to close
Open
Drying moistening watering spilling
Open
Seeing awake alive
Open

 

The single moment between gone
And not yet come
Open
Simply fully merely here

Eyes open

 

Putting it into Practice

I said I hope these episodes will include something experiential. So I want to try something as we close.

I invite you to find some time, maybe later if you can’t do this now…get settled and breathe…imagine there is a warmth and a light in your very center, like an energy of life and compassion. In a moment I will invite us to pause and whisper a gentle word, a word of aspiration and hope, and invite us to aim it at a situation, at someone or something or someplace in need of our tiny souls doing one tiny thing that in fact might matter in a very non-tiny and transformational way, whether anyone ever knows we did it, and whether or not we ever know about the outcome. 

If you are in a situation where you can pause the podcast and do all that at this time, wonderful…or consider doing so later. I will pause a moment now to give you time to hit pause in case you want to do that now …

I’ll send us off with an aspiration for us:

May we, I and you (if there is a “you” out there hearing this right now), open our eyes and hold them open and truly see, and as we become fully alive, fully aware, and fully awake, may we move the wings of our hearts and in doing so add to the waves that can heal ourselves, each other, and, yes, the universe.

  

Next

Ok, so what is coming next?  In keeping with what I said earlier, I have not completed the “script” for the next episode yet. 

But I have a sense it needs to be about beginnings…my beginnings, your beginnings, the beginnings that shape us as people, and form the soil from which our lives grow and take shape. Those ancient texts I keep mentioning have a lot to say about this, and those spiritual creatives, religious founders, experienced a lot in their own lives, I am sure a few of them will show up…but so will the text that is written in the tissue of my heart, which I trust will inspire fresh light for you and the things written on the pages of your heart as well. 

Beginnings, souls, who you are, who I am, who we are, why it matters, it’s all part of the quest for what that cow behind the barn is and where it might be found…more next time.