Future Springs Toward Us

It is the first week of spring. I intended to write during the vernal equinox itself, but life got in the way. Sometimes I fall asleep while writing, which is something I had never done before I began writing these entries. I have a toddler- not yet two years old- who doesn't always sleep well and daylight savings time began recently which disturbed our diurnal rhythms and our harmony with the more grand circadian rhythms of earth and her creatures. Therefore, I fall asleep in the not-so-late hours of the night when I usually write, when my family is asleep, and I can digest the day and my thoughts. It is difficult to look for the future in times like these, when the present is so laden with all that came before, when each day is a race to get ahead of the past, a desperate striving to breathe in the present and a near hopeless lurch to achieve a vantage to peer toward the steam-rolling future. But, it is spring, and the trees are sprouting buds and fruit heralding flowers, the early blooming daffodils and crocus dare to show their petals and children are indomitable in their pursuit of joy and mischief. This is the time when nature does tempt us with visions of the future. We can begin to feel the warmth of summer on our bare skin or imagine again the smell of steam rising off the streets after an August thunderstorm. Autumn shares a similar potential for portent in falling leaves and baring branches. These cycles are eternal. They remind us of the awesome turnings and revolutions of our planet, the immense heat and light that travels nearly 93 million miles from our sun to draw forth life from rock and water. This is a future that lives with us day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. When all else seems bleak and gloomy, this movement of time and warmth and light through space is refreshingly true and dependable. Our relationship to it may change; we, as humans, may not be here to observe its cyclic meanderings. But there is an eternal quality to it- even if earth's revolutions were to collapse and we hurtled into the sun, taking Mercury and Venus with us and disturbing the entire delicate balance of our solar system- the greater cycles would continue. Somewhere heat and light, gravity and levity, and the waltz of space and time would continue to express their creative urges in rhythmic pulses. There is a simple yet profound meditation I find helpful in times like these. As we contemplate the vicissitudes of contemporary life, the socio-political climate or our own more immediate circumstances, we can ask, "What is eternal and what is temporal?" Sometimes it is surprising to see what slips away and what remains- love of child, music that is true, heartbeats, perhaps wind across water.