Perseverance

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.

The wearisome travails of the common spider have inspired many observers. 

Americans, and even more the Scots, know the story of Robert the Bruce, who, while hiding in a cave from English forces, watched a spider trying to build a web.  Time after time the spider tried and failed to connect the web to a support.  But finally the spider succeeded, and then quickly constructed her web.  Inspired, the Scots king didn't give up.  He continued his struggle, and won the Battle of Bannockburn in 1306.

The past few days, I've noted a spider web strung between the driver's door of my car and the side view mirror.  A spider sits in the middle of the web, patiently awaiting prey.  The web is invisible from outside the car, and the spider is small.  But both spider and web are clearly visible -- and a bit distracting -- from the driver's seat.

Several days now, I've driven off, forgetting about the web until well underway.  Each time, I've been sure that the wind would blow the spider loose.  The web flaps violently as I approach 40 mph; the spider clings on for dear life, as though hanging onto a tree in a hurricane.  Today, I noticed that when I slowed down or stopped, she would work her way off the web and take cover within the framework of the mirror.  This happened twice -- going to and from my destination.

Logically, I know that the spider has minimal consciousness and sense of foreboding.  But she's not quite merely a little automaton; some sense of herself and of her surroundings are experienced within her tiny nervous system.  I hate to anthropomorphize, but it's hard not to ascribe feelings of terror and frustration to my little friend.

Some folks would either swipe her off the side of their car, or smash her into spider juice.  I won't.  She can stay there as long as she wants, with the proviso that I must use my car as a car.

As a young boy, my grandmother showed me a spider's web in her garden.  My grandmother repeatedly made small tears in the web, and the spider repeatedly repaired the tears.  Eventually, after a number of such repairs, the spider decided to cut her losses.  She ate up the web (thus saving its valuable protein) and went off in search of a less weirdly dangerous site to construct a web. 

I assume that my little friend, sooner or later, will do the same.

When children are dying in the Bahamas, being murdered in Central America, suffering from starvation in Africa, and being ripped from their parents' arms by Trump's legions here at home, it may seem perverse for me to worry about a spider.  But as William Blake suggested, how one relates to tiny pieces of creation may reveal how we see the created world itself.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Respect for the struggles of a small spider is a small step toward compassion for the efforts of the oppressed immigrant to seek a safe life, and of the starving victims of natural disasters simply to stay alive.