Goliath and a Spool of Thread

I want to talk today about spiders and flies, and about doing the impossible.

I was watching the news last night, and I got to remembering something that happened last summer. We were having a problem with flies getting into the house. Big flies. I mean, they were HUGE. They were slow-moving and incredibly loud, and kind of snotty and arrogant. You know how when a fly lands, the buzzing stops? These would land, and you couldn't figure out where they were until they took off, and you could just hear them sneering, "Sucker." They moved around from room to room really slowly, like they were checking the perimeter for intruders or something. No, it was more than that: they acted like they owned the house. There was an overnight coup, and now they'd taken over.

These days I feel like our whole country has been taken over the same way, by people not too different from those flies. I can hear them every time I watch the news, or read the paper - that same low buzz of greed and arrogance and sneering contempt. They move along, so sure of themselves and their superiority, and we can never seem to find them or figure out where they came from or what they're up to until they've done another awful thing and it's too late. The more I listen to that buzzing, the sicker I feel.

But then I think back to that day last summer. The flies were doing their usual thing when suddenly Top Floor Fly #1 sounded different. Instead of that sneering buzz, it was like he was screaming, "Mayday! Mayday!" So I went to investigate, and looked and looked - and finally I found him.

There, in the corner of one of the windowsills, was the tiniest little spiderweb I think I've ever seen - I swear, it was maybe two inches from end to end. And nearby was its maker, a really little spider. And there - you guessed it - caught in that little web, was this Mac truck of a fly.

That fly was wiggling, and buzzing, and swearing, and the spider was just frozen, staring at it like she couldn't believe her eyes. I halfway expected her to start doing the touchdown dance or fall on her spider knees and give thanks. I waited to see what she would do.

Then - zoom! - the next moment she moved into action. I mean, she went into a spider frenzy, with all the efficiency of an emergency surgical team. She started dancing back and forth, flinging out spider thread as fast as she could, over and around and back again, while that huge fly was twisting and buzzing at the top of its lungs calling for backup and telling that little spider what he was going to do to her when he got free. But the spider didn't pay him any attention - she just kept working hard, getting the job done. You could just about see the sweat flying off her. It made me tired just watching.

Finally that fly was just trussed up like a chicken, and it wasn't buzzing anymore. Nope, it was done. Game over.

Now, when you watch the news or read the screaming headlines, it's easy to feel hopeless. But you know what? When I think of that tiny spider, I feel a little better. If she could do that with just her wits and her persistence and her spinnerets, tying up Goliath with a spool of thread, maybe we can, too. Maybe if we don't give up, if we keep working and keep trying and keep giving it everything we've got, we can have the last word, after all.

So here's to all of us, the little people who care. Here's to all of the millions of folks who want our country to pull itself out of this swamp of corruption and hatred. And here's to the billions of people all around the world who are doing their best to help this world we love so much to survive. Let's all stop for just a minute to take a deep breath and remember just how much we matter.

And then let's all pick up our thread and get back to work.