Spin Your Own Web

     This is a picture of a drum I painted with an image of Spider Woman surrounded by a rainbow.

Both are important in the mythology of southwest Native Americans.  Grand Mother Spider, as they call her,  is the Creator of the world, and she also takes a helping and supporting role, and sometimes a reproving role, in the legends of the Hopi, Navajo, and others.   She spins the web of being, and draws all creation out of herself.  

     There are ways we are like Grand Mother Spider.  We too, spin our own stories and lives.

They come out of our own being, our own consciousness.  There are those who say that everything that we might think is "out there" or "happened to us"  actually is of our own making.  That makes the blame game a little harder!

     "What tangled webs we mortals weave," says Shakespeare, and he has a point.   If only what we create in our lives always had the beauty, the symmetry, the strength, the skill of a spider web. I have often marveled at seeing one sparkling with dew-diamonds on the stairs going down to our cottage on the beach in Michigan.  When is the last time you really looked at a well-woven spider web?

       Of course, there's another side to its beauty.  Watch a bug caught in a web, struggling to escape, and being consumed by the spider that has been waiting for its prey.  And consider the times when perhaps you felt caught in someone else's web, or maybe someone got caught in yours.  Spin out for yourself what the elements of that web might be.....

      This drum was inspired by an experience at Morning Star Retreat center, where I sat in one of their delightful little log cabins one day and watched a spider make a web from start to finish.  At the end of that time, I had a song that came to me.  I can't sing the tune for you, but the words are written around the margins of the drum.  In case you can't deciper them, here they are:

Spin your own web, sister (or brother) dear,

Spin your own web, do not fear.

Never let yourself be caught

In another's should or ought.

Spin your own web, spin it now.

Spin your own web, you know how.

Other people's webs will be

Places where you can't be free.

I've been caught in more than one web not of my own making.  Maybe you have too.

It is too easy to get all tangled up in someone else's drama or design, and begin to feel one has to take on all their problems.   Those of us who have a strong helper streak are especially prone to this mistake.  Pretty soon, we find we no longer have a life of our own.  We're living in the webs of other people's needs and stories.  But if we don't live our own unique life's design, who will?  If we don't weave our own web of beliefs, choices, and action, we will most certainly get caught in those of others.  At this stage in my life, I think I am finally learning to spin my own web!