It’s that time of year…the spiders are almost as busy as the bees, spinning their webs and releasing their babies… a process called “ballooning”. It’s not that the spiders are more prevalent now, it’s just that the change in temperature inspires them to come inside, where we are more likely to see them. And while most people would prefer not to see them, I don’t mind one bit.

I’ve been meditating on this idea: how something is always there, perhaps, outside our periphery, but it requires a change in order for us to see it… If we can open our eyes a little wider, look in a different direction, take the road less traveled, or just do nothing (sometimes the biggest challenge) and allow something to reveal itself, rather than go looking for it.

I’ve also been thinking about the relationship between the timeless sacred spider spirit and the hypercurrent energy of the web that now connects people all over the earth. I can’t remember whose vision predicted this…Black Elk? John Fire Lame Deer? Nostradamus? My mom-brain is addled with making lunches and the 10,000 emails in my inbox, so I can’t remember exactly, but from somewhere in my readings, I remember a pre-computer age sage predicting this humongous, invisible web stretching across the earth, and drawing everyone up in it.

For awhile, I was doggedly opposed to creating any traceable online presence for myself… I was living very fully physically, and not at all virtually. But my world was getting smaller and smaller, and more distant. Now I’ve resolved that as virtual as forging (or reforging) connections through this web can seem, those connections can also be just as real. The initial connection (or reconnection) may be “virtual” but as long as the relationship is brought off the (web) page and into the realm of the physical, the connection can be also be virtuous… whether it’s online “dating”, reconnecting with old friends, or creating new client relationships, the practice of making connections can be very silky smooth with the web drawing the lines between people. This may be sort of obvious to those who have been more open to the possibilities from the beginning, but it took some time for me to hammer out the synchronicity between being “virtual” and believing in the virtuousness that is possible in that realm as well.

And if you know me, you know my spider heart likes to draw connections between people, because sometimes I’m just the intermediary between two others whose connections need to pass through me, and that’s part of the path I’m walking in this life.

So don’t squash the spiders you see! They eat the darn mosquitoes, and do lots of other good things. Put them out the window or door, release them back into the world, as they release their babies into the wind. And go out into the web (world) and make your connections, because it is through doing so that we can make things a little better in a lot of different ways, for all the beings, both real/worldly and spirit/virtual.