A week ago I was in Arcata California. This is from Saturday morning there, after a night of gentle rain and a misty dawn. The spider webs at Arcata Marsh Nature Center were spectacularly jeweled and drapped the bushes in webs of refracted light. I could not resist framing a few with the long end of the 600mm equivalent zoom on the Olympus OM-D E-M10, and then, this morning, collaging three into this composite image.

And for the Sunday Thought: It seems like it ought to be something about transcience and fragile beauty…considering both the fragility of the webs and how temporary the jeweling of the moisture is. These webs, if they survive the morning, will be next to invisible once the moisture drys off the strands. They will go back to being the efficient insect traps they were intended to be.

But I am not feeling either transient or fragile (relatively speaking) this morning. That Saturday I was. I was suffering my first real experience of the full discomfort of acid reflux, and thought I might be having a heart attack…and I was certainly feeling my vunerabiliy, and every moment of my age. I felt like one of those webs…my moments of life like the beads of moisture hung suspended on a fragile web of being. I am considerably better now. Once I figured out what was happening to me, and started on Prilosec OTC and Zantac, the effects began to moderate, and and have receeded to memory now (though I do have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning just for reasurrance). I have lost the fragile, suspended feeling.

Now, when I look at these webs I see strength…astounding strength. I see a miracle of engineering in the service of life that comes close to defying the laws of physics. I see beauty in the way the light is collected, focused, in each bead of moisture…how together they turn the dim light of the misty morning into something to wonder at. And I am perfectly willing to see my life as one of those webs…my precious moments strung on a intricate network of intelligence, each strand the ample strength of a faith in the living God. Come breeze and blow. Come sun and dry. You can not erase the wonder of the misty dawn, caught in dew on a spider’s web. You can not erase me. Not because of who I am, but because of who God is! It is good to be alive today. Sunday. Happy Sunday!