I am coining a new phrase- SDD or Seasonal Disorientation Disorder. Since February 1^st it has felt like spring here in Northeast Ohio. If it had been March or April, you would expect the yo-yo extremes of warm sunny days coaxing out the early flowers and returning songbirds followed by freezing nights and a few inches of snow. But it seems we have added another whole month to springtime. Now that it is March, there are already robins, nest builders, returning geese couples, early booming plants and benches that beckon you to sit a while in the warm sun. It seems wrong to cut winter short (unlike in Alaska where they had record snowfalls) and yet delight in wearing only a light sweater or jacket to walk and jog along clear paths.

We are fortunate that lovely weather is the result of climatic disruptions. Others around the country and the world watch droughts and floods and violent storms destroy their way of life, with the looming certainty that the usual order has forever been changed. I know I do my best to limit my climate unsustainable consumerism as an individual living in my community in America. But as an individual I don’t have much of an impact on the sweeping reforms necessary to ensure that my grandsons will have a safe planet to live on. But I can vote!

My spiritual practice stabilizes me in a big picture of humanity’s sojourn on Earth. There is nothing in the universe that does not expand and contract, passing through stasis points on either end. What remains constant is the source of creation itself, called by many names, accessed, and sought after by science and diverse paths, all leading to acknowledge our impermanence. I can live with that. I do live with that intimately as my body ages and declines in its own unique way.

Today I am grateful for mobility scooters and sunshine, friends and neighbors, nurses and physical therapists, and the joy of being alive to witness being one of eight billion people on earth. Consider that we are a very small percentage of the billions of beings that we share the planet with. Even the few tiny  ants that have begun to traverse the desert of my bathroom floor are part of my world each spring. Taking every moment that I have, just to be alive, is the joyful thing that I, as an individual, can do my best to inhabit every day.

Outside

I will go outside where pond-gazing is magnetic,

to spy on turtles rising from the mud of

gold and copper leaves tossed

like wishes into the autumn murk

caught frozen mid-decay

in ice mandalas sliding across the ballroom floor

released into black waters shimmering in

warm spring sunlight

rippled by today’s breeze,

by old thoughts dropped

into the dark brew.

The bounded certainty

of my room, weighted by shoulds,

maybes, papers, internet messages

hold a lingering whiff of

a delicious morning meditation

urging me out, get out, let go,

hand myself over

to the unseasonably early spring embrace.

Spacious skies invoke breathing,

geese preening, songbirds nesting,

stillness dissolving into silence.