is so easy for us to lose our wise instincts, to even be aware of the webs we are helping to weave in the world.

Monday…A title and one photo are all that I have to give today, but they are a hint of what I am trying to wrap some words around. I’ll keep coaxing and be here again tomorrow…

Tuesday…And the coaxing continues, but as I keep waiting to write here until I’ve finished a good day’s work, my mind is now weary and my skin pleads for time away from the screen. So I and my book are going to spend time beneath the old elm’s rather withered leaves while there is still light, with a plan to share my heart in the morning…

Wednesday…Candle lit, fingers over the keyboard in my lap, how to begin? Not really beginning, tho’…I’ve been here before. Heart and mind full, voice and fingers still. Not my inner voice, not the responses that echo through my own head while I pin another piece of laundry to the line or place a scrubbed, dripping plate in the dish rack…oh no. The connections, insights, opinions and dare-I-say-it…wisdom come thick and fast these days. It seems to be one of the gifts that have come along with the more-challenging physical manifestions of ever-closer menopause.

Not that it is new to make connections, but the depth and breadth of them in recent years is all-encompassing, sobering, overwhelming, astonishing, beautiful. Nature-made connection brings a sigh of contentment, awe and a falling-into-place. Human-made connection mostly the other sort. I remember hearing about a chemical plant that was compromised during the hurricane and flooding in Texas, releasing dangerous gases into the air, and learning that it was a chemical used to make plastic. Oh. Of course. I already knew about the tiny micro-beads of plastic made in China and transported all over the world in container ships to be made into other plastic things. And that many of those micro-beads leak out into the ocean to pollute it and be eaten by fish. And that plastic never biodegrades, only breaks down into smaller pieces in our land and our water. So all of the plastic clothing we buy and wear and wash (the fleece, the micro fiber cloths, the spandex, the polyester) sends tiny bits of plastic out of our washing machines and into the water we eventually drink and into the creatures and plants on land and sea. This and so much more I’ve learned about plastic.

But I hadn’t thought about the chemicals needed to make it into its many forms that surround us these days. Another strand to add to the web of plastic that I’ve become so aware of being woven around our planet, and into our everydays. It is these human-made webs that preoccupy my mind and spirit, for as the world wags on, following each new strand of newness in a short-sighted, linear way, my vision is clouded with the many strands attached to what is actually the web of every choice we make, ever action we take…

That is as it should be.

And isn’t it beautiful and comforting and liveable when such a web is woven with understanding and care? Instead of the obliviousness (at the very least) and greed that weaves so many webs these days?

I’ve been watching a garden spider weave her web above the tomato patch when I go to shut up the hens at twilight. Slow and careful work. She does not need understanding for her weaving for she has her instincts intact. But is so easy for us to lose our wise instincts, to even be aware of the webs we are helping to weave in the world.

I read something recently that I discovered when I wanted to know if male spiders weave webs. It turns out that only young male spiders do, until they give it up and turn their attention to mating. So I have been correct when I use the feminine to describe the spiders and their weavings around my home and garden and fields. This is so pleasing to me, because I have such a passion to share with the women in my world all of the ways I hope we can reweave our webs, large and small, to create a more beautiful, comforting and liveable world. And the passion seems to be finally overcoming all that keeps me quiet. Tho’ I am not so quiet at Wisteria & Sunshine, and if you long to learn more about these weavings, please join us there. I can speak more openly within its sheltered, peaceful walls. But I will write again soon here, perhaps about a connection I recently made about my reticence to speak, in general. I know it is a common one as the world gets noisier and more coarse. Until then, here is that something that I found…

Spiders do not weave their webs just to catch prey. They also use the web as a safety line when they are in danger of falling, or if they want to throw themselves into the air. Some spiders also weave a web around objects such as eggs and food that they wish to preserve.

Doesn’t that make you want to bring more care and understanding to your own weavings? It does me…so deeply! Back soon. xo

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