Blazing Star Visitation. Happy Sunday!

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I went again to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday to check the Blazing Star bloom. It is not much more advanced though we had a couple of sunny days at the end of the week. I leave for a week in Tucson on Tuesday, and hopefully it will not be past when I get back. I did manage to catch a number of Insect visitors on the blossoms that were showing…Wood Nymph and Sulphur butterflies and a Skipper, as well as innumerable Bumblebees, and this Flower Crab Spider.

The last Flower Crab Spider I found was white. My references say that the females can change from white to yellow for better camouflage depending on the flower they are using as a hunting perch. I am certain there is actually no thought involved, but clearly whatever automatic mechanism that controls the color change was totally confused by the intense Purple of the Blazing Star. 🙂

Sony HX400V. 60mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. I used program shift for greater depth of field since the flower was moving in the wind and precise focus was difficult. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.

And for the Sunday Thought: I did a little poking around on the Web in reflecting on why this spider might be so yellow and found that most insects have much more limited color vision than we do, and those that have similar vision to ours actually see higher into the ultraviolet. So, in fact, I have no idea how a bright yellow Spider on purple Blazing Star looks to any of the spider’s prey. It might be perfect camouflage. We humans tend to assume, until we are reminded otherwise, that our own vision of the world is the only one. Even among our own species that is demonstratably erroneous. It is safe to say that no two creatures see the world exactly alike. We are enriched by both what is common to our vision and, if we allow ourselves to be, by what is different. The common vision can be a good indication of truth. If we all agree on something it must be actual and true, right? Except when it isn’t. And that is where our differences come in. Our differences point to aspects of the truth which none of us see clearly. Literally point to. It is sometimes possible to sense the unseen truth they are pointing if we look at enough of them and take each one seriously as a pointer.

This is nowhere more true than in Religion. Most of what we know, or at least what we can say, about the spirit falls in the “pointing at the truth” category. And that is where we most need to value our differences. I am confident that there is only one spirit and one truth, one spiritual reality. None of us see it clearly, but taking our differences as pointers, we can perhaps more perfectly sense the truth that embraces us all.

It will never be as obvious as a yellow Spider on a purple Blazing Star, but then it does not have to be. 🙂

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