Attuning to the invisible web
Interdependence requiring a whole new set of feelers
In complex relational webs where many people are living, working, and in process together, I have been asking myself, what does it take to attune to the needs of the web as a form of caring for the whole?
Is there a way to witness what is happening in communities, relational ecosystems, and villages from the lens of mystery? To give ourselves to the faith that what is hard in the moment for us as an individual, is part of a larger movement towards transformation, group belonging, and initiation?
Part of these questions come from the ways my mind and body can begin to dig myself into a hole of individual obsession. My needs, my preferences, my path and moment in time requiring the full attention of the people around me. When I get into this place, I am not only inadvertently cutting myself off from the source in which I am tied to, I am disconnecting myself from what I truly long for: knowing that I am participating in a gift to this source, that is integral and connected to those around me.
It is in the holding of both, this tender balance of my belonging within the web and my integrity as a unique and separate part of this web, that creates a tension keeping each strand taut yet connected.
When thinking of this complex yet dynamic structure of the web, and knowing that what is happening globally is impacting what is happening interpersonally, the question that has been emerging is: what kinds of feelers do I need to grow in order to attune to the waves of this historical moment of multi-poly-crises to better navigate my relational web’s own iteration of multi-poly-crises?
So, I started to study spider webs
I have been watching videos of BBC spider footage1 and muting the narration from the David Attenborough type British man describing what he sees. The accompanying monologue I grew up with, no longer holds the same charm and I get frustrated by the narration interpreting the spider’s moods, projecting onto the spider the (in my opinion) domineering survival of the fittest Darwinian2 motivations.
Yet it’s hard to deny that with the film technology we’re currently blessed by, we have incredible access to stellar footage. The use of lights, huge macro lenses, incredible tracking technology to meet the natural world where they’re at, is an epic way to witness the non-human world.
Animals have always been an interesting study for me. Our late spirit uncle, Bob used to be who I would immediately call after an encounter with a bear, fox, or spider. When Bob and I would talk about animals, we would revel in their divinity, their godliness, their mystery. It was not about understanding them completely, it was about learning the cultural stories associated with them, the embodied messages we received from them, and enjoying their expressions of aliveness.
The steadfastness animals have in living into their wholeness in relationality with all that’s around them, gave us insight into our own expectations and preoccupations with our human conflicts. They would reveal to us at times the protective violence of a bear, the long view witnessed by the eagle, the safe havens created by the mole.
When I watch this intimate capturing of the spider, wounding up their thin silky threads with hooks at the bottom of their feet, I feel awe, the presence of god, and an absolute recognition that this is a teacher, one who reveals their lessons to those who humble themselves to their wisdom.
So, I watch, and I wonder. At times the spider web is unseeable. When the sunlight dips away, the web is cast into the backdrop. Only when the glimmer of light shows itself, does the web again reveal.
When I watch the creation of this woven architecture, I wonder: what are the woven infrastructures embedded in our social ecosystems that are invisible to the eye? When are they revealed, made visible through our felt experience of them tugging and pulling at our hearts and minds?
Perceiving a glimmer of the spider web, is like coming into awareness of the unescapable reality of our relational webs, that cannot be shielded from the impact of our movements. An earthquake that rumbles through the land, is like a judgement, a misunderstanding, a lack of insight, a need to discharge energy, and it moves through a community like a wave.
The relational web is sensitive. When a dyad is under duress, it shakes and moves the strings around it. When a foundational member has a longing to distance for a period, the rest of the relations feel stretched. Angela3 once astutely observed, “the resourcing always needs to come from somewhere.” In other words, when one part of the web is incapacitated, things cannot happen as they were or resourcing needs to come elsewhere.
So, where does this resourcing come from?
Taking on the loose threads
In the video, I watched as a neighboring spider came across one of the threads onto the web. The original spinner immediately ran over and cut the thread swinging back to the other side. Now with their web severed, they began collecting each loose thread, balling them back into their hands, eating them, to begin the process anew.
This is a lesson of vitality that spider shows me.
When webs are made up of the regurgitated insight of past rupture, might we wander into the inner knowing that spider nudges us towards?
This week, I am preparing for my first semi-permeable, live, witnessed conflict mediated by an elder. There will be about 14 witnesses watching me and another, resurface our past relationship that has spanned several years in and out of friendship, lover-ship, and collaboration.
Part of the intentionality around semi-permeability, is our nod to the web. A recognition that what has transpired within our dyad, what some might see as our intimate not-for-public-relationship, has in actuality deeply impacted the whole.
That our dissatisfaction with each other, our collaboration and love for one another, our trauma responses, our pains have reverberated into the bodies and psyches of all that is around us. And these movements pulsating from the pain of the relationship have changed our surroundings just as much as they’ve changed us.
This live conflict, follows an over 4 year long relationship, in which I’ve written about our ending in the past. At about 1.5 years after this ending we are now engaged in a process spurred into action when we more intensely began to live and work in the same community again.
What this process has been stirring within me has felt like an excavation of my deepest wounds. At times, I hurdle the pain towards others, or direct that towards myself.4 I have felt alone in this process at times, wondering if anyone can see this tiny part of the ecosystem screaming for help.
Yet when I take a step back and tune into Source, I am struck by the incredibility of this moment in time. That despite what I often impatiently perceive as the “slowness” of this process, is actually the recognition of how deep this process is, and the work I need to do to deepen my awareness of what this process is asking of me.
And to sit with my discomfort, my unease, all the feelings that arise in this process, is what the web is calling from me. That the gift from the web is to be challenged, stretched, reminded of our entanglement, and the pace of our nervous system in connection to the proximity we have to systems of support.
Popular culture tries to tell us that a good friend is one that validates and supports our every decision. Relationship ecology asks us if we’re willing to test our relational health through the depth of the path our relationships forge within us.
Two of my elders often remind me, we attract those we are meant to heal with. And so, if we are attracting those who point to our gaping wounds, magnifying our pain, retracing our steps to the homes we felt abandoned by, might we grow our capacities to see what these realms of attraction hold for us with seriousness and commitment?
Learning from spider
Right after a big community rupture, I got a tattoo on my arm of a spider weaving a net of roses, leaves, and sticky threads of entangled relations. On the body of the spider is the character 易 a pictograph depicting the sun on top and water/clouds on the bottom. This character, yi, is a symbol of change, like clouds moving across the sun.
I often don’t understand why I get the tattoos I get until years after I’ve been etched by the ink. I just knew that after this community rupture, I needed to humble myself to the wisdom of this creature, and become a student of their work.
There has been a way in which I’ve expected the web to hold me like a child in its arms. Where I have given to get, and gotten without understanding the depth of what I’ve received.
There are ways I have pulled at the threads of the web to garner support, recognition, and attention. There are ways I have severed, torn, and twisted the threads in a thrashing to receive belonging and care.
But the maker of a web is one we all get to play. The maker of a web notices each tear, each separation, each loose party. The maker of a web chooses where to weave, when to weave, and at what point to abandon the web for another.
Attuning to the web of relations is not just about recognizing our impacts to each other. It is recognizing we have creation within us, we are not bystanders to the life we want to live. It is cultivating feelers that stretch out beyond ourselves not because we need to consider others, but because the world around us is yearning to inform us of what we are part of, intrinsic to, in a cosmic dance with.
We open ourselves to being the spider when we are ready to dance with change. To partner with the happenings around us, the poly-crises of our time. To be moved by the people in our lives, and to turn towards what is being evoked, birthed, and restored when we feel the collapse, intensity, and heaviness of our times.
In seeing the w(holiness) of all the uncomfortable and inconvenient truths laid out by the death in our lives, the pains we carry, to recognize all the gaps in capacity, we might contact a larger mystery that brings us to our knees, making sense of these happenings through the incomprehensible powerlessness and undeniable power of our role within these times.
And it starts first with feeling.
Investigating the stories that bring the storm clouds in. Seeing the value in the hurts we carry. Witnessing the individual parts as reflections of a collective yearning, loss, and discovery.
To attune to the web means growing the feelers that sense beyond the words that are said, the tone that is used, the story we feel is true. Attuning to the web requires us to sense a deeper purpose that are feelings are pointing to, a greater mystery in which our frustrations are guiding us into, a larger ecosystem in which the dreams we dream are too narrow for the insight the web has in store for us.
Interdependence is a practice, and the spider reminds us — it’s a sticky one.
better listened without the audio (imo)
natural selection, as expressed by Darwinian science is not necessarily unfruitful, but holds a sort of bias towards seeing all of life as a struggle to pass on ones genetics
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