Grace Building on Killer Spiders

As they say, "Just when it seemed things were back to normal..."

I was putting the finishing touches on the Bulli house; I'd got to the point where I thought things like, "This would look nice here" or "A painting of this would go great on this wall" when I noticed a strange web by our front door. I knew there were spiders; the garden is quite extensive, and spider webs would be a normal occurance.

I'd cleaned out the beds and begun the process of re-establishing order, when I saw that web. Funnel-web. I knew about these things; the females are larger but less aggressive and less poisonous; the males are smaller, aggressive (they jump to attack) and their bite can kill you in nine minutes (like angry babushkas versus SS swat troops). Then I saw one, in the garage. I wasn't yet concerned, because if they are like black widows, they would tend to stay in dark corners and hide.

Then I saw more. Also, we'd been pestering the management company for screens downstairs. I've seen, incomprehensibly in this climate of some rather dangerous bugs, lots of houses without screens. "That's just the Aussie 'whatever,'" someone told me. Well, though we are fresh from a land where mountain lions stalk about neighborhoods, we were adamant about having screens.

Finally, the screen man came the same day as the 'flick man'--pest control. He kept coming back up the porch from the garden and looking at me, shaking his head as he knocked funnel-web after funnel web spider off his brush-stick.

After the spraying, the spiders must have had a war conference. They all started coming out on the outside of the house--balcony rafters, window frames. I myself killed five (how many Australians have had the adventure of killing five of these things?). By this point, I thought, "Well, they probably like to stay outside." At least that's what the flick man said.

At about nine pm, Ana was, without being asked, being unselfish and sweeping the kitchen floor. The house was quiet; everyone was tired from school and me from fighting with spiders. Thaddeus was out at the gym.

I see Ana come around the corner, her face calm but white. "Come with me, Mom. Quietly."

I didn't need to be told what it was.

There he was, on the floor. I attacked him with the broom and nearly destroyed the couch in the process. I would have set the damn thing on fire if I'd thought it would have helped.

Looking at the little carcass, Ana and I were breathing hard. Nine minutes til death and the thing jumps at you. We looked at each other and I said, "We're outta here."

I called Thaddeus, and all of us (shoes on and I wish we'd had nuclear bomb suits) packed up what we needed for the night; we called Ryan, and Peter Pelican, and Peter brought over the keys to our refuge, the Rausch House. Peter did not stay to chat.

We all jumped in the car and drove away. We pulled up to the Rausch House, and Thaddeus got a couple bags and walked toward the front door: right into a huge web. We all started screaming; it was 11 pm by now, and we probably woke up the neighborhood, but we'd lost our minds by then. The said web was occupied by a 50 c piece-size spider. We shone our cool i phone flashlights on it and then right there, on the spot, looked it up online on the said cool i phones. We identified it as a 'common garden orb-weaver.' We almost hugged it.

In the house we went, all of us wondering what this truly ridiculously scary experience was about. TJ fell asleep immediately; it took me much longer. I kept freaking out at anything that moved.

As I lay there, happy to be away from that house, I remembered the first night we slept there; I remember that I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling a terrible presence. I thought, "We have to get this house blessed." The next morning, without any knowledge of what I'd been thinking, Thaddeus said, "I asked Fr. Luke to come over and bless the house." I held that in my heart, wondering what it meant.

This morning, waking up in a refuge house, I wondered about the meaning of this; either some things are just random, just bad luck, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time--or, things have meaning, all things...good and bad events, naturally scary things a means to some supernatural end. When I wonder about this, I always think about Gandalf saying, "I've never met such a thing as luck in this world" and a priest who said once, "All these things on our road are the will of God coming to us in some way."

So I wondered, because this was like being attacked in some way. Other people I respect have said, "How can you say that bad things are somehow God's doing?" It is a tough question.

I thought about it, still, as I drove TJ and Sophie to school. Ana was too tired to go.

As is my habit now, I stayed at Redfield to say a rosary in the chapel. The year 10 boys came trooping in as I was praying, for a recollection with Fr. Felix (from Spain). I listened half-way and kept praying. He said, "In my homeeleey, remember I say 'Eet ees self-geeving and geenerowseety....." and his voice went into Charlie Brown-adult-voice-mode for me, as I prayed for a good resolution to our issue of being chased out by insects.

Suddenly, my full attention was on Fr. Felix: He was saying, "Selfishness is a poison...you know, we have in Australia these funnel-web spiders that can kill you. That is how strong is their poison. They have those fangs, you know? When we do selfish acts, we are like poison for the human community. Someone said once, 'One selfish act poisons humanity;' on the other hand, good acts bring health and goodness to the world."

It was one of those rare moments when you know God is looking right at you, a direct gaze, and He's speaking through someone--to you.

I saw, through my full attention, through my questions and fear, my own selfishness. Not a morose thing at all; when true sight happens, it isn't depressing: it is frightening. Why? Because you can see it but yet, when you really truly see your own face, you know you don't have the power to change it. Perhaps that is why we don't want to truly see our vices; it is like finally, after years, seeing a huge wall at the edge of a garden one has been living in for years, and realizing that one isn't in a garden but rather in a prison.

All you can do is stand at the foot of that wall in your heart and cry out for God.

I sat in the chapel and then went into see Fr. Felix. I asked him, "How does one deal with the poison of selfishness and yet be balanced about what one needs?"

"Yes," he said, "A mother especially has to take care of so many needs; it is a matter of keeping a balance, and of knowing that you can only be generous and self-giving in the power of God. You keep the image of Christ on the cross, and you think, 'You did that for me; I can do this little things for the other.'"

How pat that sounds; how many times have I heard that? I needed a bunch of spiders to help me see this truth anew, yet again. Yes, in order to make dinner with love, or clean that boys' toilet yet again, or do the -what is it now? 10 thousandth? load of laundry, especially in my middle-aged, hormonally-challenged, forest-dweller state, it takes the power of God. How do I then remain myself? Am I just a vessel for Him? Who am I? Am I just the selfish part?

Somehow, He says, "I will make you new"--like the lover who pours his whole being out for the beloved, we are not diminished by His help. Somehow. It is one of those truths I know, but I do not understand.

This was the grace of God for me, building upon nature, as Thomas Aquinas says; God using the things naturally around us, even the hard things around us, to create situations of grace...if we are looking.

The miracle is that none of us got bit, especially TJ, who had four of these things living right outside his window (with no screen). That's the miracle part. Sometimes you know the angels are about. It was clear to me that God simply wanted us to go through this, but that He held our lives in His hand, like a parent who calmly watches you approach the edge of a cliff...and you don't know the cliff is there, and you don't know that He's holding on to you, to let you learn, and live, one more day. One day, He will let you go, letting go only to catch you on the other side: learning will be over; a new life will begin.

Ana had her own grace-lesson: "Scary things like this, Mom, make you braver in some weird way...I laugh now, in the face of tarantulas."