As with all good stories, once upon a time in a place very near to your heart, the mother of all wisdom was walking in her garden enjoying the flowers when she looked over the cliff and saw Melissa, one of her daughters struggling in the depths of hell. This young soul (we are all young souls to the great mother), this young soul had been an assassin, an arsonist, a burglar and generally an all around criminal. A lifetime of lawless actions put her in hell, where she was in the company of others much like her.  

The mother of all wisdom looked deeply into Melissa’s life and saw a moment where the woman had come upon a spider. She had raised her foot to stomp on the spider, but then she had remembered a story one of her teachers told in class about how the Native Americans honored spider woman as one of the world’s creators. At that one moment, Melissa smiled to herself, and thought, “maybe this spider is a descendant of the first spider woman.” And so, the woman picked up the spider and moved it to a safer place.   

Seeing this one act of kindness, the mother of all wisdom took a spider thread and lowered it into the depths of hell with the intention of saving Melissa. 

Melissa saw the thread, reached for it, and found it strong enough to hold her weights. Using all of her strength she began to life herself from hell.  As she was making some progress, she looked down and saw hundreds of others behind her climbing up on the same spider thread.  Melissa looked back and yelled, “Get off! This is my thread.” And looked down and shook the thread to dislodge the others, the thread broke and Melissa fell back into hell.

This story also kind of reminds me of the story about fear, generosity and spoons with long handles. I guess a world of justice and respect will include forgiveness and second chances and openness to community, which by its nature requires forgiveness and second chances. People! community! it can be a pain to live with them, and you can’t live without them. … forgiveness and second chances. Somedays it really does seem that we are all just hangin by by a spiders thread!