Every time the wind blows through the jeweled trees, a miracle is produced.
The Sukhavati Sutra

EPHEMERIS FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF DEEP WINTER
THE SEVENTH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR -WHEN OWLS MATE
The Tufted Titmouse Moon wanes through its fourth quarter all week and becomes the Skunk Cabbage Moon on January 15 at 2:11 a.m. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this dark moon lies overhead around noon.

RUMINATIONS ON POLYGONIA NATIVITATIS  AND THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Nothing comes from outside your mind.
Shunryu Suzuki
On Christmas morning, I got up about 5:00, went out into the greenhouse and listened to the wind and rain drive against the southeast corner of the house. I built up the fire in the wood stove and sat for almost an hour listening to the waves and eddies of the storm, the tin roof bucking and thumping against the rafters, the windows rattling, the leaky door of the stove moaning.

After an hour or so, the rain stopped, the gusts continuing for a while more, and then by sunrise, all was quiet. Yellow Springs lay in the windless center of a low-pressure cell, the sky clearing.
I went outside on the covered back porch to check the temperature: almost 50 degrees. Then I noticed a butterfly, a polygonia comma, perched on the head of the small stone crucifix one of my sisters had given the family some years ago. I conjectured that the insect might have been seduced by the warm south winds and had come out for spring; or maybe it had been driven from its winter quarters by the violence of the storm and had found refuge on the cross.

Now I am a wavering and superstitious Christian, easily swayed by signs and sacraments, and so the appearance of the polygonia on a crucifix in the wake of a freak rainstorm on Christmas morning was bound to trigger some uneasiness of spirit.

The nature of my discomfort was hard to name, and all kinds of associations passed through my mind for the next several days. The symbolism was obvious, of course, the butterfly that so many cultures associate with the soul – a creature of transformation, of rebirth, of metamorphosis – appearing so close to solstice, on the day commemorating the birth of the God who supposedly took on human form in the last of the darkest nights of the year. And if that were not enough, this winged visitor landed on the ultimate Christian icon!

But, at the same time, I knew that the polygonia nativitatis (as I named it) belonged to a hibernating species, and spent the winter here as an adult.  It was, I reasoned, no great surprise that the unseasonable wind and the rain had forced it from its retreat. It was likely that innumerable butterflies had been swept out of their lairs and landed in improbable places that morning.

Still, I could not stop wanting this butterfly to mean something. Was it a messenger from my Irish Catholic ancestors? Was it one of those minute “butterfly effect” variables that might influence the entire weather of the world? Was this the butterfly whose wings would set off sunamis and cyclones in the Indian Ocean? Was this butterfly actually the cause rather than the effect of the storm (as a Chaos Theory physicist might argue)? Was it an Isaiah of global warming?  

The next morning at 7:00, I checked the crucifix: my butterfly was still there. The wind was shifting to the northwest, and the barometer was rising. The day remained mild, but then the temperature dropped to the 20s that night. On December 28, the high below freezing, the butterfly held to the cross all day.

Then when I went out to check it on the 29th, the temperature at 16 degrees, the polygonia was gone. I searched for it in the leaves below the cross, but it wasn’t there. The encounter was over, and I was disappointed, having found only questions in my vigil. But that night I was reading from Zen master Shunryu Suzuki: “Nothing comes from outside your mind,” he wrote.