Drained

This morning when I awoke, it was 46F. It will get down to about the same temperature tonight. The day was one of those luminous ones, the kind that start with swirling showers of yellow and gold and red leaves, the kind with high puffy clouds riding across the sky so blue it frightens the eyes, clouds lit from within with the high-wattage bulb of glory, the kind where the warm, buttery air carries within it the scent and hint of the frost that is coming on like a jove, the killing, revivifying frost, the dear rime of the earth’s whirl. It was a difficult day to be trapped inside a building.

I got the water running and stepped into the shower, still trying to shake off the fog of sleep. Lathering my face and hair, I saw through soap-squinted eyes that I had a visitor. A good-size brown spider was scampering along the inner wall of the tub, his progress slow and awkward because of the beating water. I usually rescue insects I discover in the house and release them outside, but when I saw the spider, a wave of indifference overcame me. There was no way I was going to interrupt my bathing to get a cup and ferry the spider outside.

“You’re on your own,” I said to the spider.

I watched, and as soon as I was done rinsing my hair and face, the water caught the little fellow just right and put him into an eddy, and down into the drain he went. I shrugged and continued my shower.

Just as I was about done, I looked down and saw the spider extend a leg, then two out of the suds and above the lip of the drain. He hoisted himself up with a mighty effort and stood diminished and roughed-up in a spot just out of reach of the falling water. I turned off the water and reached for my towel, still watching the spider. He stood there until I was almost finished, and then slowly crawled across the bottom of the tub. When he reached the sloping back of the tub, he climbed and stopped to rest on the rim. I whispered, “Don’t go singing any hymns of gratitude to me. You got out of that one on your own.” I turned to finish my preparations for the day. When I returned a while later to comb my hair, the spider was gone.

I see God in nature all the time, and I often speculate about my relationship with the smaller creatures, and about how incomprehensible and godlike I must appear to some of them. And today, while thinking of the little eight-legged visitor, I wondered how many of my kind he has encountered already, if any. And how many more of us he will run across. Some may help him, some may ignore him, and some may seek to harm him.

And what of the great unseen One to Whom I lift my hymns and petitions, the One at Whom I rage and Whom I pelt with questions and demands? Is there just one of Him? Or are there many like Him? Could it be that the Norsemen were right about a multiplicity of gods, each in charge of a particular section or aspect of earthly life? Could it be that the God Who angers me and the God Who warms my heart with devotion are different gods?

Perhaps it is good that I am no longer a member of any church, good that I do not have a weekly forum in which to ask honest questions. It’s hurtful to be called a heretic and a troublemaker and divisive and contentious. I have been called these things in the past, and perhaps that season is past now that the churches have decided to bow the knee to whichever Caesar impresses or intimidates them the most effectively.

But I will keep thinking of the spider swirling down that drain while I, who had the power, the personality, and the inclination to intervene, did nothing. I will keep thinking of him dragging himself out of the mouth of doom and making his way to safety. I will remind myself that when I admonished him not to sing a hymn to me, I was not joking.

The little things do not always see me pass by. But they often feel the effect of my passage.

Do spiders ask questions?

~ S.K. Orr