Spring's Annual Rerun

There is a cold breeze. Thick fat snow flakes swirl in a cloud. Two birds twitter in the bare trees. It is less than two weeks past the first day of spring-the vernal equinox-here on my mountain in the Catskills of New York and I have just composed this Haiku:

I think of this time of year as a border time. It is neither this nor that-winter nor spring-but a shifting between two seasons. The border is not fixed now. It is permeable. The seasons slide back and forth within hours or minutes or, sometimes, even seconds.

Spring is returning. Life is resurrected. And living creatures pass over from the dead of winter into the burst of spring. Spring is returning. Funny that we speak only of spring returning. Fall doesn't return. Summer doesn't return. Winter doesn't come back. Yet, while they all return in fact, only spring returns in our language.

The Seneca Indians believed that all nature is sentient-that there is a consciousness in the snow, the birds, the stream. As I see the stream rushing through the still banks of snow, they both speak of the coexistence of opposites. For each season contains its opposite.

It is in the darkest day of the year that the sun is born. December 21, the winter solstice, is the shortest day. From that point onward to the summer solstice, the sun extends its dominance upon the earth. It is in the darkest night of winter that the Persian god Mithra was born. Many Romans adopted Mithra and celebrated his birthday on the winter solstice, often December 25, a few days after solstice when the light had begun to creep back. The emperor Constantine was a follower of Mithra until he declared Christianity to be the state religion. And, three hundred years after the birth of Jesus, Constantine declared December 25 to be Jesus' birthday. The birth of the Sun-the birth of the Son. The birthdays of Mithra and Jesus remind us that light is born out of darkness.

Death and resurrection is the rite of spring. In Jewish tradition, Passover marks the release of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt. It is no coincidence that this freedom from bondage is celebrated at the beginning of spring. The celebration of the passage of the Jews from slavery into the land of milk and honey is also a celebration of spring. Its origins lie in the very ancient spring festivals commemorating the birth of the first lambs of the year.

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