Sacred Symphony of Spring

We were just about to back the car out of the driveway when my partner noticed an orb spider web that hung between the passenger side mirror and the door of the car.  The heavy clouds had left beautiful drops of dew at all the intersection points of the web and it glistened in the pale morning light.  The spider must have spun its web during the night or early morning since it hadn’t been there the day before.  It probably seemed like a great place to create this intricate insect trap.

As we drove down the street, the web shook in the breeze but held up rather well.  Once on the highway, the super strong silk was no match for the wind and the web was swept away.  I hoped that the spider was hiding behind the mirror, safe from the wind.

The web felt like a metaphor for the times we are living in.  We build structures, social webs, ways of being that seem like good ideas at the time.  We think we are building on rock and that things will never change.  But suddenly, the ground begins to move.  Up is down and down is up.  Our structures seem to fall apart before our very eyes.  What we knew can be swept away in a moment.  My sadness at seeing the web destroyed was really sadness for my own sense of loss in these rapidly changing times.

But then I remembered the spider.  Once the car stops, she can swing down on a silken thread and find a better place to build her web. Or maybe she left before the car moved and is already spinning a new one.    She can make all the silk that she needs in her spinnerets and build a new web.  She is the ultimate symbol of creation.  In fact, in West African creation stories, Anansi the spider creates the world.  In Hopi stories, Spider Woman creates the first people with Tawa, the Sun god.  Many cultures have stories about spiders involving weaving and creating.

Spider reminded me that we are creators as well.  We can form new structures, new relationships, new ways of doing things.  Perhaps we have to examine if we want to recreate things as they were before, or if they need some changes and some new ideas.  Although it can seem as though our webs are being destroyed by the speed of change, in fact we are still connected to everything in a web that is part of the structure of the universe whether it is visible to us or not.

Coltsfoot Flowers

After driving for a while, we came to the Wye Marsh and went for a walk, in search of a seemingly elusive spring.  Even in the cold misty air, spring was evident.  The fiddleheads of the Ostrich Ferns and the Blue Cohosh stems were rising magically from the leaf littered forest floor.  The Coltsfoot flowers that look like miniatures suns were closed tightly waiting for the Sun to open them.  The Marsh Marigolds had yellow buds on them that were in the same holding pattern.  We found several cracked Canada Goose eggs that had been licked clean by some hungry mother raccoon or otter. 

Blue Cohosh

At the side of one of the ponds we found dozens of Tree Swallows dipping and diving as they ate insects.  It was time to stop and take in this amazing sight.  A Leopard Frog began to croak and the Canada Geese were honking as they do.  The Swallows were calling out in their shrill way as they flew past.  And then a bell began to ring from the Martyr’s Shrine across the highway, a reminder of the sacred calling people to worship in a church.  The tolling bell, the frog, the geese and the swallows created a kind of Sacred Spring Symphony as we watched the birds carve twisting arcs through the sky.  For me, they were all visible evidence of the web that connects us, a reminder of what is eternal and a call to keep on creating within that web.