“Christ claims us for the great task of building humanity. We will not know what it means to be human until we are one.” Timothy Radcliffe
I was watching a spider outside my kitchen widow the other day. Fall is often referred to as the Season of the Spider, and with good reason. As the sun shines throughout the day, I see their silken strands spread from one side of the yard to another. They’re hanging from trees, bushes, weeds, and even from thin air (it seems).
When I come in from doing yard work, I sometimes resemble Indiana Jones coming in from some great adventure, all covered with webs, dirt, dust, and Lord only knows what else. I went out the front door the other day, which is quite unusual, as my preferred means of ingress and egress is through the garage. In any case, I whipped through the front door to go get the mail and heard the tell-tale sound of ripping webs as the door opened. As deaf as I am getting to be in my dotage, the sound could only mean one thing. I had entered the Kingdom of the Spiders, and my life was now hanging precariously by a thread and subject to the beneficence of the Arachnoid Royal!
Fortunately, he/she/it was in a good mood. I presume they had just finished munching on a cow or some other hapless critter who had gotten all tangled up in their web of intrigue. So I tossed aside those sticky-strands-threatening-entrapment with windmilling arms that, surprisingly, did not get me airborn, despite the number of RPMs I was generating.
My rule of thumb when dealing with wildlife of any sort is that if it is in the house, it is subject to my disciplinary measures, which include removing gently (when possible), or smashing smartly when kindness doesn’t work. I’m really quite binary that way. Life outdoors, though, is a different matter, and I really do try to respect their space. However, I’ll admit that doorways and pathways are off-limits to anything with more than two legs, so I took the broom to the porch and entryway and removed (with some sadness, I’ll admit) the engineering marvel that had been placed there so carefully by the eight-legged MacGuyver who’d claimed my ‘hood as his or her own.
Anyway, getting back to the spider with which I’d started this missive, I was amazed by the size and extensiveness of the kitchen window spider’s abode. Her lines stretched from the eaves of the house to the ground, and spread out about five or six feet in a half dozen directions. I often wonder how spiders construct their homes. I always see the webs after they’re finished, but never during construction. Do they drop down from a high spot and then push off from the wall, swinging from a strand, and doing a Tarzan yell? I don’t see how else they could accomplish the feat (or feet).
Anyway, this kitchen spider seemed to be quite at peace until unneighborly birds began flitting around looking for tender morsels to consume. Something alerted my friend to their presence, for after just a minute or so she crabwalked off the center of her web and found a nice little hiding spot beneath a nearby leaf, and hasn’t moved from there since.
Spiders tend to be solitary creatures, and being a solitary dude myself, I can appreciate their desire for dark corners and safe places. During this Covid situation, I’ve become even more hunkered down than usual and am beginning to wonder if I won’t engage in spinning webs myself. Radcliffe (in the quote above) suggests that one of Jesus’ goals is and was for us to be about the business, not of building webs for entrapment, but for connecting with one another, building up one another, supporting one another during times of trial and tribulation and, ultimately, creating the oneness God intended for the human race from the beginning.
That’s how I prefer to approach life, to be honest. I don’t want to hide – not even from enemies real or imagined. I want to connect, build, unite, and be a source of joy and strength here in this, our valley. If I am to be a web-slinger, that’s the kind I yearn to be!
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