The spider web

This morning's gift: a tiny spider web in my backyard.

It is an eight-sided world all to itself, maybe three and a half inches across. It is a single plane that bends and curves in the wind. A long single strand of spider silk connects each vertex to a leaf or stem in the wilderness of the 50-year-old grape vine next to the patio.

I am lucky to be sitting here, at exactly the hour, exactly the right angle of the sun, to see the web glitter. The camera on my phone can't see it, and I may not have seen it either were it not for the breeze that gives it motion to refract the light this way and that. The strands that weave from radius to radius are packed close together. They'll snare some mighty tiny bugs for
 the worker who built this glittery trap.

I brought my knitting outside with me this morning, along with my coffee, thinking to redo the unsatisfactory work I ripped out last night. The openwork lace, the bright pink yarn, the shiny chrome needles look like materials for Jack's giant above the clouds compared to the delicate craft and threads used by this tiny arachnid.

From Wikipedia: 
Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms.

How does she do it? How does she warp her loom among the leaves? How long does it take to spin and stick together so many tiny threads? I noticed the beginnings of this work yesterday, but I didn't pay close enough attention to answer these technical questions. Robins and rabbits are much larger targets for observation these days in my weedy, wormy yard. I'm glad I walked only on the fence side of the patio table yesterday, however unintentional this was. Walking around the other way, brushing between the table and the grape leaves, would have destroyed this web before it was so perfectly. Mistress spider would have taken her business elsewhere, begun again, just another day in the chanciness of nature. But I would have missed this morning's moment of magic.

When I wake up in the morning, slowly, I inevitably reach for my phone. I wish I didn't, I vow not to do so the next day, but there it is. A press of my thumb, a touch, scroll and soon I'm reading the morning's news, not that much different from the news the night before. And last night's news was about looting, protest, fires and the angry, hurt, frustrated voices of black Americans who have waited far longer than anyone should have to wait for justice, freedom, prosperity. Does it do any good for me to linger over the details? To tweet, or retweet, or lecture others, mostly like-minded, about the evil I see, the change that needs to happen?

If I am to live mindfully, faithfully, filled with the Spirit, I must weave those things into my living too, be as mindful of the pain around me (and within me) as I am this morning of the wonder and beauty of nature.

The spider spins, needing nothing from me. In God's kingdom, lilies of the field and plain brown sparrows receive the tender care of their Creator and the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. God desires life and love for the created world.

I must invest in that creation.