A wolf, a Charlotte and Mrs. T

“If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad” –C. S. Lewis

Some of you may already know my knack for discovering spiders in our basement around this time of year as I blogged about it last Fall. (check it out here ) Yes, October is approaching, usually the month when I see the most arachnids in our basement laundry room, yet I’ve already had several spider encounters recently. Let me share.

Imagine my duress to stumble on a rather large wolf spider sauntering through the bedroom door in the early morning light in August. Mind you, this spider had to make it up two sets of stairs and three cats to make it this far. Why this room? There are others before it in the hall after all. Yet here it stood in 8 sturdy legs. Seriously, do I have spider magnet or something? You would think that I would at lead get SOME sort of spidey power for the bites I’ve received in my life. Nope. Nada. No web spinning or swinging from buildings. But I digress. Several pounding objects later including a journal, book and shoe, plus a few exclamations of distain from me, the now flattened adventurous Wolf Spider Columbus was on his way to the new world via a toilet flush in a Kleenex boat. Each instance like this draws me closer to spraying for bugs around the house. I’ve not given in yet, though.

For the second time in my life, “Charlotte” has now appeared outside our front door, spinning a nightly web. She creates her web art between the porch light and rail, neatly tidying up in the morning. My mother and I named a similar spider that who spun webs in the small rectangular window next to our front door one summer many years ago. It was fascinating watching through glass as it spun a web each night, caught meals, ate, then took down the web each morning. I learned a lot about Charlottes that summer and their practices, feeling safe inside as I observed. That Charlotte met an early demise as it poorly chose to scurry across the path of my spider-hating brother one day as he came in the front door. No more Charlotte. This new Charlotte smartly scurries up into the light fixture when we open the door, but more than once I’ve almost backed into the web as I took the dogs, Charlotte deep in ‘web management”, still in the center, waiting for a “Delicious Dish”. I’ve kept with my policy of outdoors ‘ok’ indoors ‘dead’ and it lives on. That is, unless Charlotte finds her way on me. Then all policies are null and void.

Now a new and much larger “Charlotte” has entered into my life. You see, my daughter’s 4th grade teacher has a spider for a PET in the classroom. GAH! This is not ordinary garden variety spider, but and biggest tarantula I’ve ever seen. In fact, the teacher noted, “She molted this summer and is much bigger now.” Holy cow people, the BODY of that arachnid was as big as a man’s palm. I know this because one of the fathers during school open house held it. Shivers ran down my spine as I approached the room and saw hefty ‘Charlotte’ in the doorway area on the teacher’s arm. No, Charlotte is not an appropriate name for that brutish mass of hair and goo. It is by no means as delicate and articulate as the E.B. White’s Charlotte conversing with Wilber and crating fantastic advertising web. It is big, brutish, hairy, by its mere size it reeks of attitude. Therefore, I call it Mrs. T. So there I stood, wondering–should I stay outside or try skirt the whole scene to get into the room? Even Kayla seemed a bit timid to enter the room to check out her new desk and class.

One thing I’ve learned as a past teacher and now parent is my daughter, and other children for that matter, observe and imitate grownups quite often, especially in cases of fear. When teaching after school programs in Mililani, HI, decades ago, I knew if I overreacted to something such as a banana spider or centipede in the classroom, I was guaranteed a rounding chorus of the same type of scream and reaction from 25 Kindergarteners. With that in mind, I approached “Mrs. T” without comment and listened to what the teacher. “You can pet her.” “Pet her very gently on her body here” “If these antennae come up, she is agitated, so stop” On and on she went, instructing timid students and grownups how to touch her gargantuan friend.

“So what your telling me is that I’m all tied up inside…baby steps untie your knots” “Baby steps. Baby steps.” Bob Wiley in What about Bob

Finally I bucked up and pet the blasted thing exactly three passes over Mrs. T’s abdomen. I did this in part to show Kayla it was okay (she did not pet Charlotte that night, she informed me the next week that she pet the spider, too, in class). I also did it to overcome this fear of spiders. And I have to admit also that part of it was to be able to say, “I’ve pet a tarantula and it wasn’t so bad.” Now the deed is done, the baby step taken towards a more reasonable view and treatment of spiders.

Some could say spiritual journeys of discipleship are similar to my tarantula experience. Constant growth through learning, trusting, sticking out our necks to change our opinion, our direction, not matter how small the step is progress.

I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome 1 or 2 sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel..that now we are good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone.” –C. S. Lewis

Often I think our American dream of big, fast, quick, successful does a lot to damage those seeking God and Christ. We are taught to believe success likes in the large, visible changes in character to show success. These are most often noted and celebrated such as a baptism, a ‘conversion’ “public confession” or ‘confirmation”. These are very important, but not where most the real work of spiritual growth is done. We can say, we’ve taken major steps with these celebrations, yet God is constantly reaching to us from the next thing or place we need to be, pulling us forward through our daily lives, not allowing us to get to comfortable with our past resumes.

It’s that small decision on how to react or change, the seemingly inane choices we make that make a differences. “Should I get down on that person? Should I be mad or forgive and let it pass? Should I be generous? Should I acknowledge that person and let them into my lane of traffic? Should I spend my time leisurely at movies or on the computer or should I find a way to help for others? Should I hoard my money or find places where it is need more than my bank account?” Indeed, changes in spiritual character often come in the trenches. It involves taking risks and leaving the safety of what we know ‘works for us”, those often stagnant places of comfort. God’s pull on our lives to grow in discipleship is loving, constant and absolutely relentless. Yes, there are back steps, but overall, spiritual growth spring boards off this momentum, often performed with trepidation, uncertainty, and a bit of fear of the unknown, reaching out for the hand than leads us onward.

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make everyday are of such infinite importance.” –C. S. Lewis

As for my spider encounters? Well, there are conferences in October in my daughter’s classroom, so I imagine, small steps will occur as I again visit the tarantula’s lair.

“Baby step to four o’clock. Baby step to four o’clock,” Bob Wiley in What About Bob.