The Writing Spider

She built her web in the most precarious fashion, a few strands attached to the door of the chicken’s feed room and those on the other side connected to the mountain mint growing by the door. Every time I opened the door, I took care not to detach the web. And she spun and wrote and the web stayed intact. (She was a yellow garden spider, Argiope aurantia, also known as a writing spider.) And then one day, she was gone. The web was still there, but she was not. I thought maybe a bird had gotten her. But no: A few days later, another web appeared, a few feet from the first, but this one in a more stable location. And there she was – I’m sure it was the same spider – weaving and writing away. The nights are cool and the days are shorter, and I think she is getting ready to leave some egg sacs for next year. 

And from the spider, I try to learn the lesson of waiting and hoping. In Hebrew, that is the meaning of the word qavah (Psalm 130:5-6). And it also means stretched out, the tension of pulling from both ends. It can mean strength, the kind of strength that comes from a rope made of twisted cords. And it has the same origin as the word for a spider’s web. 

Ounce for ounce, the fiber of a spider’s silk is one of the strongest materials that exists – 10 times tougher than Kevlar which is used to make bullet proof vests. Medical researchers have discovered healing powers in the spider’s web. And the construction of a web is an amazing thing to watch. How does a spider know measurement and design and geometry? Why do different species build webs of different designs? How did that fragile web survive when it was anchored to a door that got opened and closed every day and a plant that swayed in the breeze? It is all a miracle. 

And this miracle is a kind of parable for human waiting and hoping. I do a lot of that these days, waiting and hoping for a safer world, an easing of the pandemic, a return to sanity in our body politic. And I feel at times like that spider, in a most precarious fashion. What does she teach me? Maybe to anchor myself in the present, even if it feels like a moving target; to weave a strong web of prayer and support to sustain myself in the hard times and the good times; to hope for God’s healing power; to wait for what God will provide. 

Frederick Buechner has said we are to go where our best prayers take us. For me, maybe that means connecting myself to the source of faith, no matter how fragile and wavering it seems, and then casting off into the unknown guided by a thread of prayer, remembering that my prayers are both fragile and tough, always beautiful, guided by God, created in my soul. Waiting and hoping, holding to a thread, praying for a landing place, weaving a web of faith and hope and love.

The first web, falling into disrepair,
but still attached!!