Spider Lessons

Spiders are everywhere this time of year and there’s only the reality of life and sudden death down at the spider's level.
I love spiders.  My first tattoo was a very large spider on my left forearm.  I carry her with me to remind me of her wisdom.
Spiders established their own web sites long before any of us appeared on the scene and each species has its own distinct, inherited pattern.
Spiders create from their own bodies. The building of a web starts with a single, super-strength strand of silk that is spun by specialized spinnerets.  Spider doesn’t force or squeeze, she just releases the silk from her body and then trusts the wind to carry the filament across wide intervals of space, sometimes a mere four feet, sometimes across an entire river.  Spider creates and releases until this strand of silk connects with something.  This is called kiting, this allowing to be carried by the breeze, not knowing.  Spider knows when there’s something in the air.
If for some reason the strand doesn’t make contact with something and attach, spider will often gobble up the strand and recycle its protein and try again.  Once connection is made, spider sets to work reinforcing the strand and then uses it to begin building the web.
Sometimes this single bridge thread is left in place overnight marking or claiming territory, and the web building begins the following day. 
I don’t know about you but most often when I’m ready to create something I experience a certain amount of fear and uncertainty, usually stemming from the fact that I don’t know the how of it, and sometimes I don’t even know the what.  I just know.  Spider reminds me that all I need to do is remember and trust.  Remember that I create from the very substance of myself, my body.  Remember that I know how to build a web and that each one of them carries my own distinct, inherited pattern.  Remember that I need only to release and then trust.  Trust that my silken thread, be it delicate and fine or thick and strong, will be carried by the breeze of life and it will attach somewhere and then I can begin.
A spider builds her web because she’s hungry.  
Being hungry is about being alive.
What are you hungry for?
Ingrid, the Rune Woman
Wise and Irreverent
Awaken Your Hunger