Pesky Common Holy

I have noticed a theme from the last couple of weeks of finding the Holy in common everyday life.  Becoming more aware to this Common Holy has grabbed my attention so I’m going to continue with this theme through the end of the month. In embracing this practice at the start of this week I wrote a prayer in my journal that asked for God’s help to open my eyes to the Common Holy. This morning as I was still struggling to figure out my topic I wrote a prayer asking for inspiration.  The only thing that kept coming to mind was spiders and ants.

God has a strange sense of humor sometimes. I have an intense dislike of spiders.  They give me the willies and make my skin crawl when I see them.  Movies really need to come with arachnid warnings, and there are still some scenes in the third Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King that I watch with my eyes shut.  I have yet to see the Hobbit a second time after that particular spider scene. Well I think you probably get the idea about spiders and my relationship with them. So it is definitely God’s since of humor that has caused them to be the inspiration for this Common Holy exploration.

We have had several significant rain storms in the last couple of weeks. These storms drove indoors an army of small ants that I am still trying to drive back outside where they belong. And yesterday I found a spider crawling up my dishwasher. Needless to say I screamed, my daughter asked me what is wrong, I said spider.  She came in to the kitchen saw the spider smaller than a dime and laughed at me. 

What you need to understand is that my fear of spiders has become a humorous joke in our family; she has plastic spiders that she likes to scare/startle me with.  She likes to continue to remind me that Spiders are created by God to and one of God’s creatures and that they are more scared of me than I am of them.  After the adrenalin quits surging through my veins I usually am able to laugh with her and acknowledge that she is right, spiders are part of God’s creation. And so are the ants that are trying to take up residence in my house.

And so I have come to ponder that little spider that gave my morning a jumpstart. Spiders do have a purpose. They eat insects that can become pesky. They build beautiful webs that are amazing in their architecture. And if I am honest they have provided moments of laughter at the ridiculousness of some of my reactions. And laughter can be a common holy moment as well.

I think the common holy of this week, has come in the realization that my child in her persistent nudging to remember that spiders are God’s creatures too, has caused me to start to think twice before I squish one. Yesterday I even contemplated trying to catch that part of God’s creation and let it outside. Then the “eeew” factor kicked in and I did squish it. But maybe next time I’ll try letting the next one outside.