Interconnectedness: The Spider and the Lake

This summer, I've been reading books of a spiritual nature. I've been learning to stop and be aware and present. I've been trying to treat that as prayer, to move through the world with a greater sense of the sacred quality of seeing, hearing, smelling, being, and the holiness of the things around me.

One morning, I sat in my back yard listening, looking, smelling, being. The light sparkled on silvery strands of spider webs that had appeared here and there throughout the yard. In one corner of the backyard swing, a spider sat in the middle of the circle of its web. The sun shimmering off the threads of the web was so beautiful to me in that moment that I simply sat and watched. As the breeze made its way through the garden, all those spider webs moved and the light sparkled and danced with their movement. The circle of that one spider's web waved and shifted, and the spider waved gently with it, staying still and grounded in the center of the web.

The image so captivated me that I took a picture, which I have shared here. I watched that spider for a long time. I thought about being that spider, sitting in the center of the fragile threads of web that connect me to the world around me. I imagined myself able to float and shift when the world around me is buffeted, keeping my stillness, feeling the vibrations and waves reach me from all those connecting threads.

Benson Lake

A few weeks later, I was swimming in my favorite spot, Benson Lake. The lake is in the Columbia Gorge, just before Multnomah Falls. A classic northwest tree line of evergreens rises up above the lake, etching points along the brilliant blue sky. Every summer, at least once, I go to Benson Lake to swim. I float on my back in the water and look at that treeline and that sky, soaking in its tranquility. This year, as I floated, I thought of that spider. I felt myself connected like the spider, the waves and ripples of the water stretching out around me. I felt like part of the lake, and, by extension, part of the fish in the lake and part of the gorge and the trees and the Columbia River, and the sky the trees touched, and the distant mountains that fed the waterfalls that fed the trees, and on and on and on. I moved, and the lake moved. The lake moved and I moved.

As I make the transition from the slow, reflective, deep, restorative meditation of the summer and back into the fast-paced, intense engagement of the school year, my prayer is that I can carry the spirit of the spider and the lake inside me, that I can remember how I am connected to the world, and that I can practice floating and moving with the world, staying still and flexible when change shifts and vibrates around me.

What Going Outside My Comfort Zone Means to Me

About 5 years ago, I paddled with a dragon boat team for the first time.  I am not an athlete.  I have never been an athlete.  In fact, I was often the kid picked last in team sports.  I tried out for the swim team once and had to quit because I just couldn't keep up.  But I joined a dragon boat team, in part to bond with my fellow teachers, in part to get regular exercise.  But a big piece of me decided I should try this new thing because I was scared to do it, because it was WAY outside my comfort zone.  It was in another country entirely.  The terrified-and-full-of-negative-associations country.

I'm not good at going outside my comfort zone.  I don't do well with change.  I'm anxious in new social situations.  I struggle when things are outside my control.  So why, oh why, would I deliberately do this?  Because every day in my classroom, I am asking students to do that very thing.  I am asking kids who struggle with reading to read and kids who struggle with math to do math and kids who are terrified to speak in public to get up in front of a room of their peers and share what they think.  If I am going to ask them to commit these acts of courage, I need to remember what that means and how that feels.

I had a great time at my first dragon boat practice and it's gone on to become a true source of joy and confidence and personal growth.  But I'm still absolutely terrified of the competitive part.  When we begin getting ready for a race, fear and anxiety grip me in intensely physical ways.  My heart races.  I have trouble breathing.  The moisture leaves my mouth and my muscles turn to jelly.

In that moment, I think of my students.  I think of a student I'm worried about.  I think of a student who faces that kind of fear when they sit down with a book or they have to take a test.  I think of the student for whom getting up and going into the world is an act of courage.  Or the student who battles to control anger or wild emotions.  Or the one who is miraculously able to giggle and to learn in spite of the worst possible realities awaiting them at home. And I tell myself, if that student can come to school and learn and try and laugh, then I can face this race and put my paddle in the water and keep paddling.

Then, the race becomes a kind of prayer.  It's my spirit declaring to that kid's spirit that I believe in their courage and it inspires me.  Every stroke of my paddle becomes a reminder that if I will ask my students to brave the country beyond the comfort zone, I must be willing to go there myself.  It is a declaration of my faith in determination, perseverance and resiliency.