Back in February, I wrote about my spider visions. As is so often the case, the vision made itself a reality through both a reference to scripture and to another human life, brought beautifully alongside my own this time. My first look at the spider came with this entry: http://sdmen.blogspot.com/2008/02/spider-spider-burning-bright.html
Slowly, like melting snow, the pictures of glowing spiders and glowing dew on webs sank down into memory, until I came across these verses in Proverbs 30, which snapped them right back to the surface again:
24 There are four things which are little on the earth,
But they are exceedingly wise:
25 The ants are a people not strong,
Yet they prepare their food in the summer;
26 The [fn2] rock badgers are a feeble folk,
Yet they make their homes in the crags;
27 The locusts have no king,
Yet they all advance in ranks;
28 The [fn3] spider skillfully grasps with its hands,
And it is in kings' palaces.
(with footnote 3 saying that spider might also be interpreted lizard...a thing that will matter, too, shortly.)
I also found this verse:
Pro 19:12
The king's wrath [is] as the roaring of a lion; but his favour [is] as dew upon the grass.
So two things came from the images I saw...the glowing dew of the King's favor ont he web/home I weave and my placement in the domain of the King as a reaching spider being evidence of wisdom. These two verses suddenly gave perfect meaning to the weird images of glowing spiders and glowing dew on their webs.
But now, a new element is added, that has to do with the fact that the word spider could also be the word lizard...even that part now bears the fruit of meaning in my life...for I have a new friend that makes it real. As I realize so often, our God is not a God of waste, but of incredible efficiency. A couple of nights ago, a former co-worker who has also loomed large as a prayer partner in my life these last three years, he brought his new bride over to our house for dinner. We had brats, got the kids settled playing Tony Hawk or else riding bikes and then we adults went out to peruse the garden and sit on the swing set, enjoying a beautiful evening.
During the course of conversation, A. showed us the tattoo on her right calf that was of a large lizard...telling us that she'd been quite distressed--even to the point of tears--when she had it done, because despite the time she'd invested describing what she wanted, nevertheles the artist went off on a tangent of his own, even making footprints drag out behind the animal. She said it was too big and looked nothing like she'd asked to which he replied he'd decided to make it "more abstract."
I'm sharing this verse about the spider with her. It hits me that this verse makes us "sisters" before You in such a personal and playful way--from my spider-dreams to her tattoo--I'm reminded what a fun God You are...how ingenious, how transformational, making that which seems a "degrading" offense to the body into a mark of Your chuckling approval "...to him that believes."
Thank You for being like that, God! Help me be more like You in the way I view such things.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Warrior's Training Begins
Where did the warrior expect to go with this wild-girl for a guide?
In days long gone, he'd come to expect
events run a-strange
in this quest for leadership and victory.
So when the girl took him, first
to a rock-bumped savanna,
and when she straight away
stretched her frame along a hot flat rock
and began to doze to the buzz of insects,
he was not in the least surprised.
As she slept, he watched
the hyrax at play.
In and out of rock holes,
first one then several
soon upwards of forty, all
sunning themselves on flat rocks
(like the woman.)
Blunt little noses touched together,
nibblings of bitter wild herbs,
whisking of back fur in a breeze.
At times, the small creatures would freeze as
some mysterious gauge
within them perceived danger,
often as he would change position,
or whenever the woman would sigh in her sleep.
He laughed once, which woke the woman,
for one rock rabbit made mock war on another.
The would-be victim twittered hearty reprimands.
"They can shriek if their ire is up,"
the woman spoke
bvut her words were still full of sleep.
"Have you had your fill of watching the hyrax play?"
He considered her visage, then asked.
"I don't know, have I?"
She laughed then, too, now full awake.
"Come, we have other things to see.
I would show you something of a city now."
She took him to a inland sea
where a small boat floated, docked.
And they rowed that boat to an island
--one appearing about 7 miles in its coastline circumference--
but she led him to the island interior.
Where still, he saw no city.
"Where is this City?" he finally asked.
"Beneath us," she said, spreading her arms wide
opening to his attention
the many clay sculptures that surrounded them--
weird shapes
like monstrous drops of clay or
random-fallen plaster dobs in some giant's palace.
Then he saw one of these strange towers
give up an inhabitant,
a tiny ant.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A supercolony. Very rare,"
She answered.
"tens of thousands of nests,
with millions of workers
and a few million queens--
all here under our feet.
Rooms for storing their food, tending their young--
yet our world takes no notice.
Do you think these industrious creatures--
given their empire here--
should be surprised
that we take no notice?"
She shrugged.
"But you'll remember them, no?"
They did not disturb the skyscraper city of ants,
but before they left the island, they paused on the beach
where they swam and cooked fish
and enjoyed the space-giving peace of the sand
and the renewal of the dune grasses.
It was there that he began to wonder if
he'd not be sitting under the tutelage
of a human voice at all in this adventure.
The next day, she took him to a place
that bore no outstanding feature
save a strange hum, a nervous energy
spangling the air all round.
But as they took their mid-day meal,
in a grove of trees quite pleasant,
just then,
she suddenly, cried out,"Wait--"
and clutched his arm. "Wait, it is about to begin."
The nervous pulsing that was no pulsing at all
rose in tenor, he noticed--
a clamorous timbre ill-defined swelled with driven energy.
When suddenly, bursting forth from the treetops
a swarm of locusts rose
making of the trees strange molting creatures,
but negatively, for here it is the husk that takes flight.
And soon appeared a flinty tip on a gigantic arrowhead
shot from an invisible bow.
"Watch them," she said, needlessly,
for he could do little else
but gape at that sparkle-wing cloud issuing forth
from above their heads,
moving toward a distant horizon.
Then the maiden returned to nibbling her bread
and with a scholarly turn, said
"Those who study such things say there is a trigger for the swarming."
"Obviously," the man responded. "Do these studious ones know what that trigger is?"
She nodded and swallowed.
"They think they do.
Overcrowding."
"Overcrowding? How do the creatures determine such a thing
as overcrowding?
Is a signal sent by some master locust?"
"They say most likely
their legs crushing against each other.
This makes a trigger,
and not the call of a singular leader.
Some number of contacts-made is the magic number,
and they fly."
"Amazing..." the man mused.
Tossing aside the hard end of crust,
she said, "Come I'll take you to visit a real palace now."
In days long gone, he'd come to expect
events run a-strange
in this quest for leadership and victory.
So when the girl took him, first
to a rock-bumped savanna,
and when she straight away
stretched her frame along a hot flat rock
and began to doze to the buzz of insects,
he was not in the least surprised.
As she slept, he watched
the hyrax at play.
In and out of rock holes,
first one then several
soon upwards of forty, all
sunning themselves on flat rocks
(like the woman.)
Blunt little noses touched together,
nibblings of bitter wild herbs,
whisking of back fur in a breeze.
At times, the small creatures would freeze as
some mysterious gauge
within them perceived danger,
often as he would change position,
or whenever the woman would sigh in her sleep.
He laughed once, which woke the woman,
for one rock rabbit made mock war on another.
The would-be victim twittered hearty reprimands.
"They can shriek if their ire is up,"
the woman spoke
bvut her words were still full of sleep.
"Have you had your fill of watching the hyrax play?"
He considered her visage, then asked.
"I don't know, have I?"
She laughed then, too, now full awake.
"Come, we have other things to see.
I would show you something of a city now."
She took him to a inland sea
where a small boat floated, docked.
And they rowed that boat to an island
--one appearing about 7 miles in its coastline circumference--
but she led him to the island interior.
Where still, he saw no city.
"Where is this City?" he finally asked.
"Beneath us," she said, spreading her arms wide
opening to his attention
the many clay sculptures that surrounded them--
weird shapes
like monstrous drops of clay or
random-fallen plaster dobs in some giant's palace.
Then he saw one of these strange towers
give up an inhabitant,
a tiny ant.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A supercolony. Very rare,"
She answered.
"tens of thousands of nests,
with millions of workers
and a few million queens--
all here under our feet.
Rooms for storing their food, tending their young--
yet our world takes no notice.
Do you think these industrious creatures--
given their empire here--
should be surprised
that we take no notice?"
She shrugged.
"But you'll remember them, no?"
They did not disturb the skyscraper city of ants,
but before they left the island, they paused on the beach
where they swam and cooked fish
and enjoyed the space-giving peace of the sand
and the renewal of the dune grasses.
It was there that he began to wonder if
he'd not be sitting under the tutelage
of a human voice at all in this adventure.
The next day, she took him to a place
that bore no outstanding feature
save a strange hum, a nervous energy
spangling the air all round.
But as they took their mid-day meal,
in a grove of trees quite pleasant,
just then,
she suddenly, cried out,"Wait--"
and clutched his arm. "Wait, it is about to begin."
The nervous pulsing that was no pulsing at all
rose in tenor, he noticed--
a clamorous timbre ill-defined swelled with driven energy.
When suddenly, bursting forth from the treetops
a swarm of locusts rose
making of the trees strange molting creatures,
but negatively, for here it is the husk that takes flight.
And soon appeared a flinty tip on a gigantic arrowhead
shot from an invisible bow.
"Watch them," she said, needlessly,
for he could do little else
but gape at that sparkle-wing cloud issuing forth
from above their heads,
moving toward a distant horizon.
Then the maiden returned to nibbling her bread
and with a scholarly turn, said
"Those who study such things say there is a trigger for the swarming."
"Obviously," the man responded. "Do these studious ones know what that trigger is?"
She nodded and swallowed.
"They think they do.
Overcrowding."
"Overcrowding? How do the creatures determine such a thing
as overcrowding?
Is a signal sent by some master locust?"
"They say most likely
their legs crushing against each other.
This makes a trigger,
and not the call of a singular leader.
Some number of contacts-made is the magic number,
and they fly."
"Amazing..." the man mused.
Tossing aside the hard end of crust,
she said, "Come I'll take you to visit a real palace now."
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Warrior's Tale Resumes
Ascending from the mountain's belly,
like an arctic butterfly
from its cocoon,
the man left the cave to descend from lands frozen
to the plains of the seven streams,
where the mountain released its ice for water.
As the ground below went from steep to level
and the air above from bracing bare to aromatic
he found the boggy grounds where the streams took their passage,
and where the crushed mountain stone floated
powdered pewter
in the icy waters of the deeper streams.
He realized that
for the first time
in a long time,
he had occasion to think not only on being a man of war,
but also on being a man of prayer.
Few questions presented themselves
but what immediate answers were made plain
in the days when he raised the child.
But the boy was near grown now,
and nigh as much a child of the woods
as had been the Queen and her Beloved before him.
Some place within the man died to the task of raising that child,
making even more room for his warrior-self to be re-born.
But with all life-changes come
the questions.
"Which am I to choose? When these streams divide, which one do I follow?"
And the water seemed to gurgle back at him,
"Just keep walking."
"Sound advice," he answered the stream without reserve,
for he was a man now quite adept
at making inquiry and interchange
with all creation.
He walked, and the streams ran along together
for a very long time.
Though the waters of the seven streams neither spread nor shallowed,
not so the waters of his drinking skin.
They dwindled away until their housing
hung empty and flat against his back.
So, he looked about him for a place to re-fill it.
Spying a stone well, he thought--
"How like the gracious God of the Boy's and the Queen's people,
indeed the God of my prayers
to make provision for my needs."
Hanging from a peg on the stone wall of that well
was an earthen ladle, while
alongside sat a wooden bucket on a braided cord.
The water he drew up was cold and bright,
making the clay ladle gleam a silvered rainbow
in its dripping;
but the water was troubled, bitter.
The water was corrupt.
And his sureness of things evaporated a little.
"What now?" asked a chiming voice,
one just at his shoulder.
So consumed had he been with this providential resource--
this well--
that he'd missed entirely the approach of this maiden
until she breathed on his neck and spoke to him directly.
He was never more removed from being a warrior than now,
in his own estimation.
He looked at her freely,
as his shame had quick burned off
any indifference per chance prescribed
by pride.
Dressed in leather he likened to his water skin,
and with hair like fibres of ice and gold
that did clamour for space in the mountain air,
and with eyes like falling stars caught up again
to heaven's heights--
she repeated,
"Hast thou been confounded by water before?"
"Once," he answered, remembering his thirst in the desert
so many years before.
"I found a strange woman then, too," he mused.
She laughed. "But I'm not strange. I've been sent to you."
"I hope whoever sent you sent water, too," he muttered.
"I prayed for water and this pit of bitterness is all I got."
She tipped her head to one side and observed,
"Nay, you prayed for water; and I am what you got."
He grinned despite himself.
"Then, lass, what would you advise me?
I came to this well with this thought:
another has passed this way before me,
one who dug the pit, encased its mouth in stone,
gave a bucket for the drawing, a dipper for its drinking.
And all for naught but a mean joke?
Cruel effort if so, in my estimate.
Who is the man that would not but take such trouble
only for the good water?"
She nodded. "Twas water once good, indeed,
in the day of the well's founding.
But not all that starts good, stays good.
Your assumptions are contradicted by this--"
She dipped again the clay ladle
in the waters of the bucket.
"The oily silver hangs behind, hugs the clay to show
the water's dross afloat, invisible
but for when and where it hugs the clay."
Elbow to knee,
she looked up from a place of place squatting before him.
"Why did you not take yourself water from the seven streams?"
He moaned the lament that had driven him to the well in the first place.
"But which one to choose?"
She smiled,
and her eyes went a-sparkle like wind chimes in the sun.
"What says ye choose?"
He stared at her a moment.
Then purposefully
he went to each stream,
across the boggy marsh grasses
firmly setting sole to kiss each hospitable stepping stones,
taking patronage from each stream's bounty,
seven portions
until the bag was full.
When he returned,
she held the bitter cistern's ladle
so he poured from the bag, and they drank
waters sweet as honey.
Then the maiden put her hands on her hips and laughed,
her mouth open wide to the sky.
"Now I will tell you what you seem to already know.
You are a warrior in training, are you not?"
Surprised by this astuteness,
the man recalled former times,
and with the memory swelled a jarring new-wisdom:
in his own days of yore, he would remind others of his stature,
while now others came to remind him.
He simply nodded.
"In a multitude of counselors is safety, man who would make war," she quoted,
casting her gaze across each stream singularly.
And as she considered the waters,
he considered her, and believed
that every nuance of the taste of the combined waters
she could dissect and attribute
to the stream of its origin.
"Sweet Water--for that is what I shall call you
as you have offered me no alternate name for your personage--
Sweet Water, do you know where these counsellors might be found
who would train me well for war?" he asked
almost playfully.
What a different thrust in his quest
for apprenticeship this was
from that of his first visit
to the land of the Queen.
"I do know where to lead you!" she said heartily.
And taking a small timber from the ground litter
she stomped a break,
gave him half
and whipped the other half upright for herself,
a flourish that made a piece of tree-death
magically a steadying force.
Planting this newly born walking stick
one stride ahead of her feet,
she said,
"Come."
like an arctic butterfly
from its cocoon,
the man left the cave to descend from lands frozen
to the plains of the seven streams,
where the mountain released its ice for water.
As the ground below went from steep to level
and the air above from bracing bare to aromatic
he found the boggy grounds where the streams took their passage,
and where the crushed mountain stone floated
powdered pewter
in the icy waters of the deeper streams.
He realized that
for the first time
in a long time,
he had occasion to think not only on being a man of war,
but also on being a man of prayer.
Few questions presented themselves
but what immediate answers were made plain
in the days when he raised the child.
But the boy was near grown now,
and nigh as much a child of the woods
as had been the Queen and her Beloved before him.
Some place within the man died to the task of raising that child,
making even more room for his warrior-self to be re-born.
But with all life-changes come
the questions.
"Which am I to choose? When these streams divide, which one do I follow?"
And the water seemed to gurgle back at him,
"Just keep walking."
"Sound advice," he answered the stream without reserve,
for he was a man now quite adept
at making inquiry and interchange
with all creation.
He walked, and the streams ran along together
for a very long time.
Though the waters of the seven streams neither spread nor shallowed,
not so the waters of his drinking skin.
They dwindled away until their housing
hung empty and flat against his back.
So, he looked about him for a place to re-fill it.
Spying a stone well, he thought--
"How like the gracious God of the Boy's and the Queen's people,
indeed the God of my prayers
to make provision for my needs."
Hanging from a peg on the stone wall of that well
was an earthen ladle, while
alongside sat a wooden bucket on a braided cord.
The water he drew up was cold and bright,
making the clay ladle gleam a silvered rainbow
in its dripping;
but the water was troubled, bitter.
The water was corrupt.
And his sureness of things evaporated a little.
"What now?" asked a chiming voice,
one just at his shoulder.
So consumed had he been with this providential resource--
this well--
that he'd missed entirely the approach of this maiden
until she breathed on his neck and spoke to him directly.
He was never more removed from being a warrior than now,
in his own estimation.
He looked at her freely,
as his shame had quick burned off
any indifference per chance prescribed
by pride.
Dressed in leather he likened to his water skin,
and with hair like fibres of ice and gold
that did clamour for space in the mountain air,
and with eyes like falling stars caught up again
to heaven's heights--
she repeated,
"Hast thou been confounded by water before?"
"Once," he answered, remembering his thirst in the desert
so many years before.
"I found a strange woman then, too," he mused.
She laughed. "But I'm not strange. I've been sent to you."
"I hope whoever sent you sent water, too," he muttered.
"I prayed for water and this pit of bitterness is all I got."
She tipped her head to one side and observed,
"Nay, you prayed for water; and I am what you got."
He grinned despite himself.
"Then, lass, what would you advise me?
I came to this well with this thought:
another has passed this way before me,
one who dug the pit, encased its mouth in stone,
gave a bucket for the drawing, a dipper for its drinking.
And all for naught but a mean joke?
Cruel effort if so, in my estimate.
Who is the man that would not but take such trouble
only for the good water?"
She nodded. "Twas water once good, indeed,
in the day of the well's founding.
But not all that starts good, stays good.
Your assumptions are contradicted by this--"
She dipped again the clay ladle
in the waters of the bucket.
"The oily silver hangs behind, hugs the clay to show
the water's dross afloat, invisible
but for when and where it hugs the clay."
Elbow to knee,
she looked up from a place of place squatting before him.
"Why did you not take yourself water from the seven streams?"
He moaned the lament that had driven him to the well in the first place.
"But which one to choose?"
She smiled,
and her eyes went a-sparkle like wind chimes in the sun.
"What says ye choose?"
He stared at her a moment.
Then purposefully
he went to each stream,
across the boggy marsh grasses
firmly setting sole to kiss each hospitable stepping stones,
taking patronage from each stream's bounty,
seven portions
until the bag was full.
When he returned,
she held the bitter cistern's ladle
so he poured from the bag, and they drank
waters sweet as honey.
Then the maiden put her hands on her hips and laughed,
her mouth open wide to the sky.
"Now I will tell you what you seem to already know.
You are a warrior in training, are you not?"
Surprised by this astuteness,
the man recalled former times,
and with the memory swelled a jarring new-wisdom:
in his own days of yore, he would remind others of his stature,
while now others came to remind him.
He simply nodded.
"In a multitude of counselors is safety, man who would make war," she quoted,
casting her gaze across each stream singularly.
And as she considered the waters,
he considered her, and believed
that every nuance of the taste of the combined waters
she could dissect and attribute
to the stream of its origin.
"Sweet Water--for that is what I shall call you
as you have offered me no alternate name for your personage--
Sweet Water, do you know where these counsellors might be found
who would train me well for war?" he asked
almost playfully.
What a different thrust in his quest
for apprenticeship this was
from that of his first visit
to the land of the Queen.
"I do know where to lead you!" she said heartily.
And taking a small timber from the ground litter
she stomped a break,
gave him half
and whipped the other half upright for herself,
a flourish that made a piece of tree-death
magically a steadying force.
Planting this newly born walking stick
one stride ahead of her feet,
she said,
"Come."
Sunday, June 01, 2008
To thine own self be true
Summer break from school and what do I do? I take the kids to the library to register them for the summer reading program. While there, I check out my own summer reading fare: books on gardening tips, folklore and nearly-lost artisan skills, dried flower arranging, and on the more practical side, a book meant to inspire me to rise to the occasion of organizing our home, disorganization being an ever-encroaching foe in our world. Why even as I sit here, I see things at this home-office station that don't really need to be here: a half-burned pumpkin-scented candle, my son's spray can of Axe deodorant, an empty can of Hawaiian Punch, fruit juicy red flavor, a little grey pencil that looks to have been inadvertently taken from bin at a put-put golf place...no wonder I need a book for inspiration!
But I know myself well enough to recognize those lengths of orderliness where I will most assuredly fall short. For instance, I know what I won't do:
But I know myself well enough to recognize those lengths of orderliness where I will most assuredly fall short. For instance, I know what I won't do:
- buy a rainbow of plastic hangers so I can color-code what's hanging in my closet.
- tag all my tablecloths (All? That would be 3 of them) with labels to identify them by size and color.
- display my rolled washcloths (again maybe 3 of them unless you count the shop towels we sometimes use in place of them) on a decorative platter (despite the fact that all of them would fit on the one tray, and the thought of that is a bit inspiring.)
- rearrange my closet so that light colors hang in the back corners, thereby giving the area a more spacious appearance.
- buy a notebook in which to keep an inventory of all of my dishes, with sub-notes regarding their condition: what is chipped, cracked, etc; nor will I set said "dishes" out to determine whether to keep them or toss them based on whether the sight of them gracing my table causes me to smile (I'm thinking here of say my green Tupperware bowl that often doubles as a serving dish given that as often as not I don't feel like washing both a storage and a serving bowl, for heaven's sake!)
I think these recommendations presume a lifestyle not in keeping with my own. The book is not, however, a total waste of reading time, because what I find in its pages that I might do is:
- use the instructions given for washing vintage fabrics such as the baby quilt my great-grandma left me.
- find the inspiration to have necklace and pin clasps fixed and to reorganize my jewelry box.
- outfit the closet with storage bins to replace the high shelving where I keep my stacks of sweaters. For years, those sweaters have been wont to slide in a heap onto my head whenever I reach for any one of them, yet I've never thought to do anything but scoop them all up and throw them back up there.
And, what I certainly hope to do:
- take everything from junk drawers and shelves, dump it all in a box, put it in the center of the living room and announce: take what you want by midnight tomorrow. After that, I'm getting rid of what's left!
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