Spidey senses

Spiders exist.   I know, it’s a blanket fact.   I feel that a good portion of souls out there would rather have a dead spider than a live spider especially in the house.   I don’t blame them, finding a spider in the house is a personal affront to my ability to keep a clean house.  I am not a squisher, though.  It is not fair to the spider.   I am the kind gentle person that would take the spider outside, and let it roam free, if it decides upon its own cruel fate and rebuilds its web in another’s house, its fair game for the spider to be squashed.    More likely though,  it will decided I offered a hospitable home with numerous places for it to find food and shelter, and move its little 8 legged body back in.    Life happens.    

            One afternoon, while taking a shower, I had a visitor of the 8 legged varieties.   It was a pretty yellow spider and rather harmless to me.    It lowered itself down on a piece of spider silk with not a care in the world, that I was large and that there were steady streams of a liquid being shot at my body.   Perhaps, it wanted a drink.   I haven’t tried having a steady conversation with spiders-I get mixed up with the discussion of wrap bugs up and drink, and it is kind of hard to get past that conversation.    Instead, I watched it.   I marvelled at it actually.   It came down without a care in the world.   Perhaps, it wasn’t paying attention, I am not sure.   Then, it felt the droplets of water coming from the shower!  I watched the consternation coming from its little body.   It shrunk itself up trying to decide what it was going to do.   It hesitated and thought about dropping down further.    I tried to mentally urge it to go back up.  I am sure my telepathic link with the spider was tenuous, at best, but I tried.    It eventually went back up into the rafters not even leaving its draft line or a trace that a moment before it had almost showered itself out of existence.   It did what it needed to do, even if it meant heading back towards the rafters.  

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.    I have a piece of knitting that I have been working on for a few weeks.   It’s a relatively simple design (it is patch for an afghan).     I have been working on it while watching TV with the young one.   My goal is to have it finished in time for this weekend.   I have been trying to meditate while working on it, as to the meaning of the particular pattern, and I get stuck.    The pattern is for the rune Ehwaz which should mean transportation and gradual development and steady progress.   Yeah, right!    Steady progress until lo and behold I didn’t count right, and it means pulling out and starting again.   Yet, I learned a lesson from that spider about being aware of what we are doing and then doing it.   I don’t know if its spidey senses told it anything about large amounts of water hurling down or that large wet humanoid like creature near vast amounts of water might mean squish.   When it did recognize the danger, it decided on a course of action, even if it meant tearing up and out.   Sometimes, development and progress may mean going back, re-doing, and figuring things out.    It can also be awareness that perhaps the time isn’t right to do something.   Yet, one must stay ever present and ever vigilant.     

Nine Virtues: Vision

Vision: the ability to broaden one's perspectives to have a greater understanding of our place/role in the cosmos relating to the past, present and future. (ADF, 13)

It seemed somehow fitting that I pull an ogham regarding vision.   I pondered the meaning of what meaning nGẻadal would have in regards to vision.  NGẻadal   means harmony and health (xxx), and others describe it to mean working and tools (Ellison, 37).    Psychologists and psychiatrists might argue that not living up to one's values causes imbalance which results in anger and shame which them results in depression and lack of self esteem.  Vision is the ability to recognize one's own place in the world, and to recognize where we come from, where we are currently, and where we want to go.     It is also the foresight to be able to change those paths, and thus live in harmony and health.   Vision is the ability to set dreams and goals., and gives us the ability to see the tools that are needed for those goals. 

Vision is not always cut and dried.   The virtue of vision asks us to stretch our minds outside of the box, and to think about the effects of our actions and lifestyles in accordance with the other virtues.  In this way, vision goes hand in hand with other virtues.  In this way, vision is a tool.   Perseverance without a goal is meaningless.  Vision fuels creativity.   If one does not have an understanding of one's self, how can one have integrity, and sometimes wisdom is vision in disguise.   Seers use their vision to understand the omens, and bards and artists use their vision in creative pursuits, whether it is a piece of artwork, or a deliciously bold tale.    Vision, too, lets scholars be flexible, and see other points of view in the same way that broom and reed are flexible and resilient.  

Bibliography

Ellison, Rev. Robert Lee "Skip". Ogham: The Secret Language of the Druids. Tuscon: ADF Publishing, 2007.

Publishing, ADF. Our Own Druidry. Tuscon: ADF Publishing, 2009.

The Ostara Bunny

I am going to tell you a little story...as all good stories it starts once upon a time...Once upon a time, there was a tiny little bunny. He was brown,  soft, and furry. He had a little cotton tail and could twitch his nose, and had large floppy ears, and he could go hop! Hop! Hop!  There were many Goddesses in the world, but none were as beautiful as the Goddess of the Spring and Dawn. As the winter began to thaw, she would start slowly to awaken the world in shades of green and bright colors. 

Our little bunny loved to eat the little shoots that came out of the ground, and he was very happy that
Spring was finally here. So happy in fact, that he wanted to find a gift for the Goddess of the Spring. He searched high and low.... He looked in trees, he looked under seas, that little bunny even sneaked into my house, and found the little house mouse. (His name is Stuart!) But he still could not find a gift for the Goddess. He even reached under a chicken with his little paws, and pulled out an egg!! 

He looked at that egg and he looked. He stared so long that he became hooked, and decided that eggs were very pretty, but they needed colour. He painted that egg, a very pretty red. He gathered several more eggs, and painted them all sorts of colors-violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and purple with pink polk-a-dots. He painted some with stripes, some with checks, and even some with little duckies on them. He gathered them all into a little basket, and very quietly walked up to the Goddess, as she was encouraging a nice luscious batch of lettuce to grow. He twitched his nose, gathered his courage, and pulled on her dress to gain her attention. He quietly handed her the basket of those pretty eggs, and looked up at her with his little bunny eyes, full of hope and love. The Goddess was thrilled. No one had offered her a gift of such pretty colored eggs before. She was so excited, in fact, that she wanted everyone to share in her gift. She asked the bunny to share those eggs with the rest of the world. Our little bunny was so very proud that he hopped to the ends of the very big earth and shared those eggs with everyone. This is why we color eggs at Eostre... to celebrate those very colorful gifts that our little brown bunny with the floppy ears had given.