3 Lessons from a Magnificent (But Terrifying) Spider

Today I meet a cross orbweaver spider.

Cross Orbweaver Spider

In the cooler weather, I know these spiders find warmth inside my house.  Spiders terrify me, but I want to give her a chance.  One can't destroy another just because of fear, just because of misunderstanding. 

Orbweaver Spider in the Woods

I learn that this spider rarely bites.  In fact, it's supremely difficult to provoke her.   Inside a home, she'll eat dust mites, fruit flies, and various pests.  Her webs help clean the house. 

I also learn that she eats her web every single night and builds a fresh one every single morning.  She keeps her web free of debris by starting over every single day.

I love that she starts fresh each morning, removing debris from the day before.  I love that she stays calm and unprovoked.  I love that she's helpful. 

I want to be more like her.  Welcome, little spider.

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Do you encounter unusual spiders in your home this time of year?

The Ugliest Mushroom

I'm back in the woods for the first time all summer. 

As the sun sets, the children gather burrs to make the roof of a fairy house, and my neighbor and I discuss the invention of Velcro arising out of viewing these burrs under magnification.

 
The burrs hook and cling to anything near them.  Relentless, intense, and desperate.  I love the shameless audacity of a burr.  I need you!  I won't let you go! 

"They're just awful," my friend reminds me.  "Just wait till the fall when you can't get them out of your hair." 

Meanwhile, mushrooms decorate the forest.  I remember believing that little gnomes lived within them.

 

My daughter finds this red one that seemed to appear overnight.  We take pictures as evidence.

Red Mushroom.  Home for a Gnome? 

My friend points out the ugliest mushroom we've ever seen.  It's probably poisonous.

The Ugliest Mushroom

I kinda like this mushroom.  Awful burrs and ugly mushrooms.  Ugly:  repulsive and unpleasant.  That's only one way to see them.  Even the ugly has something to give if you examine it the right way.  Burrs give us Velcro and this ugly mushroom catches the setting sun. 

It's beautiful out here in the woods. 

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Journal:  Yes, nature has some ugliness to it.  What's an ugly natural thing?

A Message from a Pandora Sphinx Moth

I arrive into my driveway, and an enormous Pandora Sphinx Moth greets me.  The moth--as big as my own hand--sits with authority as if sent to deliver a message.   We think, at first, a leaf attached itself to our door.  But then we see clearly.

Watch carefully.  Things are not what they seem. 

Pandora Sphinx Moth © Live with Flair

When you have a Pandora Sphinx Moth welcoming you home, you feel as if you're in another land with enchanted creatures.  Anything can happen here.  Look again, and you'll see wonderful things. 

I lean in and observe the velvety wing.  What a strange and curious world this is!  Even when I'm inside my house (folding laundry, cleaning dishes), I know the moth guards my door.  Just remembering that such a beautiful and mysterious insect exists somehow brings delight and wonder to the whole morning.  Living with flair means taking some time to observe the strangely beautiful. 

Pandora Sphinx Moth Wing © Live with Flair

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Journal:  What strangely beautiful thing did you see today?

Too Deep for Words

Waterfall After the Rain

When I'm out here in the woods, I don't think about shopping or decorating my house or how many pounds I have to lose. 

When I'm out here in the woods, I listen to the way the water sounds as it spills down this hill. 

And when I'm out here in the woods, I talk with my friend about Jesus and truth and meaning.

There's something about creeks and rivers that sets my soul back on track.  I look deep into the pools that gather by fallen logs, hoping to see fish or turtles.

I've never, even after all these years and pages and pages of writing, been able to capture in words what it feels like to stand by the rushing water in the deep woods.

It's too powerful for words.

Water Rushing in the Deep Woods

Living with flair means finding places with God that go deeper than language.   


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Journal:  What's that sublime place for me? 

A Clog in My Heart

Yesterday, I'm walking alone in the woods behind my house.

Evening in the Pine Forest

It's not a very big forest, but it's big enough to get lost in.

I'm looking up through the pine trees, taking photos and moving forward with a grand plan: I want to see the sun set through the pines, and I want to find beautiful pine cones.

A chill settles on the forest, and a strong wind snakes around the trees like it's coming for me.  I know if I keep walking in one direction, I'll hit a road, but I'm not sure which road or how far it is from my home.

By this time, I find myself taking a winding path and tumbling out onto a foreign road like I'd been spit out from the forest's dark mouth.   I'm in some strange neighborhood now.   It's getting colder, and I'm sapped of strength.

Finally, I clench my teeth and call my husband because I have no idea where I am.   He's so loving about it, so gentle.  But I'm angry at myself that I have to call him for help, and I refuse to have him drive to pick me up.  Instead, I walk the mile home along a road with no sidewalk. I'm too smart to be lost.  I'm too capable to need rescue. If you saw a hopeless woman without her coat, tripping along and nearly falling back into the forest, you were looking at me. 

Pine Cone on Forest Floor

What is this deep resistance in me?  What ancient sap inside of me keeps me proud and unyielding when I know I need rescue?  I refuse for anyone to come find me and just take me home.

This morning before church, I review my photos:  The pine trees and these cones aren't oozing sap like they do in the warmer months.  In the colder seasons, the sap thickens and hardly flows.   There's a clog in the heart of those trees until the summer sun comes and warms it, changes it.

As my husband pours warm syrup over snowman-shaped pancakes this morning, I pray that God would unclog the cold, hardened things in me.  Otherwise, I'll stay lost and wandering in that dark woods. 

A Taste of My Own Medicine

For all my talk of releasing children into nature, with nothing but pure imagination and the grass beneath their feet, I'm not one to take any time--as an adult--away from technology to just relax outside with no plan, no agenda. Is nature only good for the young?  What would happen if I joined them? 

How would I do it?  Would I be barefoot?  Would I look for frogs or collect random sticks? 

Leaving the cell phone and the netbook behind, I placed myself under a tree in my front yard.  The children played by instinct with the sort of freedom and abandon of fish finally released into water after nearly suffocating on land.

But for me, this environment of dirt, grass, pebble, and twig threatened to destroy my pedicure more than relax me.

But I stayed on, noticing the shade and breeze against my body.  I settled into the earth, introducing myself by removing my shoes.  I curled my toes around the grass and took a deep breath.  A moment later, a single white garden spider crawled over my big toe, and two ants found my left arm:  my welcoming committee. 

I'd been incorporated.

I was in.   

At one point, I opened a book and leaned back to read in the grass.  Afternoon shadows grew long, and the wind was cool.  The girls laughed and chased an enormous toad.

Their voices faded into the background of songbirds, the rustle of leaves above my head, and the hush of my own slow breath.   What peace was this in my heart?  What soothing balm? 

Tomorrow, I'm telling my children to send their mom outside.  She can't come in until dinner.

A Real Message in a Bottle

Yesterday, a message in a bottle arrived in my mailbox (complete with postage, sand and shells from the beach, and a scroll).  Apparently, you can send anything in the mail.  

I have the world's greatest sister.  Every year, her family sends us a "message in a bottle" (in a recycled plastic bottle!) from their beach vacation spot.  Her boys fill the bottle with tiny shells, warm sand, and a handwritten note from the sea.  When my girls pull it from the mailbox, you would think they'd just struck gold. 

This morning, my daughters fought over toys, begged to play a computer game, and cried at least twice each over some wrong done to them.  In desperation, I ushered everybody into the kitchen and dumped the message in a bottle out onto the counter.  I didn't speak.  They didn't speak.  They slowly picked up the tiny shells, began to inspect each one, and suddenly, peace like the ocean at dawn settled over the home.

Then, the questions come:  

"How do they get this way, all different and perfect?"
"Where has this shell been?"
"What lived inside of it?"
"What causes the different sizes and colors?"
"Why didn't it break when the waves crashed?" 

I suppose I learned (again) that toys and computer games that don't allow for this kind of questioning, this kind of wonder, aren't helping my children much.  It's the same story I've read all summer:  I have to get us all to places and objects that generate mystery, beauty, and awe.  That's the way to live with flair for our whole lives.  No greed, no conflict, no suffering in the presence of something small and beautiful that we can observe with wonder.

The Red Spotted Newt and Marriage Truth

Hiking along a trail this morning, I force my own plans:  when to stop to pick blackberries, when to leave the trail and see what's down the canyon, when to turn back.  I have my own things to do. 

My Eagle Scout husband (who surely knows more) is patient with me when I'm bossy.  He calls out to me and says, "Come look at this!"

Together, we observe a fast little red spotted newt.  It's tiny and racing across the moss almost too quickly to catch on film.  I'm amazed he could see it.

Later, I want to go home, and he says, "We'll just walk a little further down this trail."

All of a sudden, the forest opens to this gorgeous lake--so peaceful, so tucked away in a deeply shaded forest.  Nobody's here but us, the geese, and the frogs that let out a yelp as they dive like synchronized swimmers off the lily pads. 

It's so beautiful.  I sit and rest.  It was my husband who brought me here to the still water's edge.  It was my husband who said, "look at this," and stopped me in my frantic race towards...what?  We celebrate 10 years of marriage this week.  This anniversary hike without the children reminded me of what's so precious about marriage:  You have a companion that walks the trail with you and knows how to guide your attention to what you can't yet see.

Later, we talked about marriage as oneness.  You have to fight the urge to be separate, to do your own thing, to race ahead.  Being--and staying--in love means I cultivate the oneness.  Cultivating oneness has something to do with pulling the other aside and saying, "Look at this!"  And if one of us has to rest by the water alone, the other one will at least capture it on film for later.

Swimming Beneath the Geese

I'm swimming in a lake with my daughters, and another family nearby starts feeding the geese.  Within seconds, a gaggle surrounds us.  They come from every direction, leaving the shore and their organized formations across the lake.  Our heads bob along in the water right against their soft, wild feathers.  I'm so close that I can look into those deep black eyes and touch the fuzzy heads of the goslings.

It doesn't seem right how close we are. It seems other-worldly. We aren't separate from the wild; we're swimming along with it. 

The family with the goose food offers me a handful.  If I'm still enough, someone tells me, the geese will eat from my hand.

And so I am.  And so they do.

I'm told we can swim under the geese and even touch their webbed feet.  Because the geese are used to floating logs and debris, they don't mind when you hold their feet.  My daughter tightens her goggles and dives under the surface to swim beneath the geese.

My five year old has pink goggles that sit on the pier.  My husband tosses them out to me, and I dive deep under the gaggle, turn myself over, and look up towards the heavens.  It's all feathers, little webbed feet, and the jeweled water swirling above my head as the sun shines down.

I stored that experience away, like I hope my daughters did, in that place in my imagination reserved for the magical, the heavenly, and the purely happy.  Maybe one day, when life bears down on my children with that weight of sadness that comes to us all eventually, in its own way, they would recall this morning swim beneath the geese.  They could live again in that moment when something rare and beautiful happened.  And they'd catch it--all feathered, webbed, and jeweled--in their hands.


It could be their flair for that day.