Autumn in New York---in January

I woke up yesterday with the light of the sun filling my room. The pale brightness was of a certain shade that I associated with spring. There was a feeling of new chi that I notice every spring, a sense of being alive, of looking forward to what the day would bring, a desire to get outside in the sun.

I could hear the birds at the birdfeeder outside my window, and I peeked at them through the narrowed slats of the blinds and saw there were five sparrows. I looked down at the poop-stained fire escaped and made a note to myself to scrub it down with bleach sometime this week. And then I glanced at the thermometer on the fire-escape -- 58 degrees.

No matter how many years pass, there is that child within us that responds to the first day of spring, the first day of summer, the day that heralds the promise of fun in the sun. But there was also the Watcher in me, aware that this was not as it should be. That this winter, there had already been many unseasonably warm days, days when the snow and ice from the day before melted by the next afternoon.

I walked down to the post office, got my mail and sat on the front steps that are the front porch for me and many of my apartment-dwelling neighbors who have no front or back yard. I took off my jacket and let the sun hit my face and arms, and watched the people of my village, the people of the Flushing community go to and fro. I watched the birds overhead, felt the sun, watched the traffic come and go, felt the sun.

I prayed for us, I prayed that these earth changes would be kind to us, that it is the making of a better world. That the choices made by those in power have not deprived the young ones of the good natural things in life that the older generations have enjoyed. I prayed that the young will still have bees and butterflies, summer, winter, spring and summer, that the rain will still fall and we can still live with the sun.

I prayed that this is not the beginning of the end, but the dawn of a new day, and that I would do my part to share the Tao and the Native American ways to keep the harmony between the Yin and the Yang, the Earth Mother and the Sky Father.