On summer mornings just as the sun is streaking through the tree leaves and limbs, hundreds of spider webs are revealed in a field. The dew droplets hanging on each strand light-up the nets that were formed the previous night. If you move beyond the fact that there are THAT many spiders in the field, it is a beautiful cascade of webbing, light, and water all combining against a backdrop of golden-coated green grasses. In order to hunt, some species of spiders make webs each night to capture prey. During the day, breezes or irreverent deer tear the webbing apart with one sharp grasp of the surrounding blades of grass.
The spiders do not witness the beauty that their many webs make within a patch of field. They need to eat, so they build a web. They do not care if we recognize the beauty or not. It is their livelihood. If no human sees the webs, no matter. If their web doesn’t catch an insect, the spider has failed at the hunt for that night. The beauty they create is not for us. But it is a gift to us if we see it.
The next morning, new webs fill the field. Each individual spider has crafted a new net to hopefully snag dinner. Each day, this process repeats itself. This beautiful and ever changing mosaic painted fresh each night and revealed by sunbeams each morning. And the spiders are just doing their thing, only aware of other spiders in terms of competition or mating. From our perspective as massively large beings (relative to a spider), we stand amazed. While we slept or stared at our phones, these quarter-sized creatures generated material pound-for-pound stronger than steel from their abdomens and wove an intricate web that caught insects and dew drops.
What if our lives are like those of the spiders? What if from afar, we are in the process of creating beauty? Of weaving a tapestry that is unveiling the inherent goodness of the earth and spirit?
As we go about our days, trying to meet our basic necessities, our smile transmits joy as a dewdrop reflects sunlight. Our letting go of the anger as someone cuts us off in traffic, our picking up and recycling a plastic bottle rolling across a parking lot, our eating and appreciating a piece of fruit, our gratefulness for the beauty of a sunset, our pain on seeing a stray dog wandering along the street are all like dewdrops creating strands of reflected light.
Nature is Sacred 