LIFE LESSONS | NATURE | RELIGION

Big Thoughts from Small Creatures

Rescuing a Spider, Learning Love for All

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The other day in a moment of compassion and courage I reached down to cup a daddy long legs spider in my hands. It had been nestled in a small web near the base of my toilet. I normally use a glass with a postcard to catch and release spiders but this guy seemed harmless.

When it began to crawl I flinched and realized it had disappeared. I reacted, shaking my sleeves to see if it had crawled up one. Then I looked down and saw that the innocent little fellow I had tried to rescue was now struggling to swim in my toilet.

Again with my bare hands, I carefully grasped one of its legs and quickly set it outside on my doorstep to dry off. Luckily, my bathroom has a door to the outdoors so this was a quick trip. I was relieved to see it shake off, reorient itself, and crawl away. Since I had intended to set it free, I would have been sad if my actions had led to its drowning death.

This sadness would have been especially intense since rescuing that spider had been a small gesture to sanctify the value of all life. As innocent people are being annihilated with bombs my taxes helped fund, I’m seeking reasons to hope. I was looking to that spider to give me a sign that our world can heal.

Once I felt certain my spider friend was on its way to a new life, I washed my hands.

Learning to see myself as part of the natural world

There was a time in my life when I would have picked that spider up with a tissue and flushed it down the toilet.

My Catholic upbringing may have contributed to my sense that I was better than the spiders I flushed and the fireflies I smashed. I never learned to see myself as a part of the cycle of life. Instead, I grew up with a sense that I was superior to these tiny creatures and could do with them as I wished.

The thoughtless way I used to ‘dispose’ of spiders feels like the root of the evil we’re seeing today. Warmongers are killing thousands of innocent children, families, and people who want nothing more than to live in peace. Those ordering bombs and raids must never have learned the value of all life.

Unlike a daddy long legs that can intentionally drop a limb to escape an enemy, the people our dollars are killing have no way to escape.

Scientists are still trying to determine if these long-legged spiders feel pain when they let go of a limb. We know that — regardless of their faith or ethnicity — babies, children, and adults feel pain and fear as shrapnel pierces and rubble crushes.

When that spider fell into my toilet, I had the power to play god determining its fate. Those with the power to intervene who decide not to call for a ceasefire or say no to genocide are playing god too. Feigning omniscience and righteousness — they are committing ungodly acts in all our names.

Unraveling my sense of supremacy

When my daughter was four months old, I became friends with a mother who practiced Buddhism. As she went about her day, she was careful to treat all creatures — even the tiniest ones — with compassion and respect. Her love for everyone and everything and her calm presence were soothing. As we raised our children together, I was inspired to live my life with a new sense of intradependence and care.

Around that time, I began teaching preschool religious education at our local Unitarian Church. I loved exploring various world religions with my children and their peers. We hoped to help each child develop personal beliefs centered around a strong moral compass.

As I was growing up, my Catholic education didn’t encourage me to explore what I believed to be true. This makes sense now that I understand the role the Catholic Church has played in history.

Had U.S. settlers learned to decipher right from wrong in their hearts, they may have questioned the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery. That decree justified stealing land while enslaving and murdering Indigenous People. Or, as we see again and again in today’s world, propaganda and greed might have suppressed morality allowing the West to be ‘Won’ nonetheless.

Last March the Pope repudiated the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. He was responding to mounting evidence of the Catholic Church’s role in the kidnapping, abuse, and murder of Indigenous children. The Catholic Church has apologized for other atrocities including its action — and inaction — during the Holocaust and its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

However, the Church has yet to give any of its vast holdings of stolen land back to the original caretakers or make any true amends for the harm it has caused.

I’m grateful that my dad’s atheism and his bookcase led me to question the things I learned in school and church. I don’t recall discussing these issues with him. Still, seeing The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, A People’s History of the United States, and a book on Buddhism sitting next to math, science, and engineering books always intrigued me.

I’ve raised my children in old mountain homes that tend to have many hidden entries. A few waves of mouse invasions have offered more lessons in supremacy.

My growing compassion has prevented me from using traditional mousetraps or sticky boards. So I learned to set a simple humane trap by using a small bowl, a larger bowl, and a peanut. I’m not sure how many of the mice we’ve ‘rehomed’ over the years have survived. Still, I’m grateful my children have learned this lesson in extending kindness to small creatures.

Religion as a cloak for dehumanization and destruction

Many faiths teach kindness and respect for animals. All teach compassion for fellow human beings. Every world religion includes some version of the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. No faith should be used to justify violence or war.

Yet throughout history, extremists have exploited religion to justify supremacy and oppression.

Catholic church leaders who covered up sexual abuse fall into this category. Other examples include:

• Iran’s “morality police” who attack women and girls for not wearing headscarves in a misrepresentation of the Islamic faith.
• The Taliban who have abused the Islamic faith to dissolve women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan creating a system of gender apartheid.”
• Hindu nationalist leaders in India who called on followers to take up arms against the country’s Muslim minority
• The Klu Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups that distort Christianity to justify violence and oppression.

Jews around the world are leading protests calling for a ceasefire and justice for Palestine. They are calling out Netanyahu for exploiting Judaism to justify genocide. These uprisings which are growing by the day offer a glimmer of hope. Perhaps our collective moral compass is beginning to awaken.

Seeing and unweaving webs of injustice

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.—Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Israel’s brutal retaliation for the October 7th Hamas attacks seems to be aimed at clearing all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have decried Israel’s escalating crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, U.S. officials and many others in the ‘Western World’ offer empty platitudes about doing the right thing. Their unwavering allyship traps them ever more tightly in Israel’s web of terror.

Martin Luther King Jr’s warning about injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere should be on everyone’s mind. Democracy and human rights are under attack throughout the world. The governments who are supporting Israel are facilitating a genocide of the Palestinian people. They are also sowing seeds of rage and cultivating fertile ground for terrorism. Hurt people (who become angry people) hurt people.

We may be witnessing the beginnings of World War III. If so, rather than being cheered and welcomed as the “Allied troops’ were during World War II, the U.S. may find itself caught in an ‘Axis of Evil’.

The U.S. called South African apartheid resisters “terrorists”

On December 13, 2013, a week after Nelson Mandela died, Angela Y. Davis gave a speech titled “On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison-Industrial Complex,” at SOAS University of London. (This speech is included in Davis’s collection Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement.)

Davis opens by reflecting on Mandela’s life and others who were part of the struggle to dismantle South Africa’s system of apartheid. She then quotes Mandela:

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

Davis goes on to describe how the U.S. had allied with South Africa’s apartheid government and how it relates to Palestinians’ struggle for freedom:

We are now confronted with the task of assisting our sisters and brothers in Palestine as they battle against Israeli apartheid today. Their struggles have many similarities with those against South African apartheid, one of the most salient being the ideological condemnation of their freedom efforts under the rubric of terrorism. I understand that there is evidence indicating historical collaboration between the CIA and the South African apartheid government — in fact, it appears that it was a CIA agent who gave SA authorities the location of Nelson Mandela’s whereabouts in 1962, leading directly to his capture and imprisonment.

Moreover, it was not until the year 2008 — only five years ago — that Mandela’s name was taken off the terrorist watch list, when George W. Bush signed a bill that finally removed him and other members of the ANC from the list. In other words when Mandela visited the US after his release in 1990, and when he later visited as South Africa’s president, he was still on the terrorist list and the requirement that he be banned from the US had to be expressly waived.

The point I am making is that for a very long time, Mandela and his comrades shared the same status as numerous Palestinian leaders and activists today and that just as the US explicitly collaborated with the SA apartheid government, it continues to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The speech goes on to describe how Israel and the U.S.’s police, military, prison systems, security apparatuses, and even schools have become entangled as part of a massive international prison industrial complex.

Which side are you on now? Which side are you on?

So far more than 8000 Palestinians including 3450 children have died in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Thousands more are missing, injured, and without food, water, medicine, and shelter.

The endless brutal assault is a response to the horrific October 7th Hamas attack which killed about 1,400 people in Israel.

Yesterday’s Democracy Now headlines described how — in a world filled with fear and rage — countries are choosing sides, harassing immigrants, and still failing to make amends for colonial brutality:

• Israeli strikes kill at least 50 Gazans in Jabaliya as overrun hospitals on brink of catastrophe
• President Biden requested $106 billion to fund the militaries of Ukraine and Israel and to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Chile and Colombia have recalled their ambassadors to Israel.
• Bolivia has cut diplomatic ties with Israel, citing crimes against humanity.
• Yemen’s Houthi militia said it launched air attacks in southern Israel Tuesday in response to the “brutal Israeli-American aggression in Gaza.”
• Pakistani police are arresting Afghan nationals as a crackdown on immigrants intensifies. Many Afghans, who’ve lived in Pakistan for decades, fear having to live under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
• King Charles expressed “deepest regret” for colonial violence in Kenya but stopped short of an apology.

Learning to live together in peace

Today when I noticed a daddy long legs crawling on my kitchen wall I chose to let him be. My house is small but I have plenty of room to offer haven to a few spiders. It’s the least I can do as I strive to remember my role in the natural world. As a mother raising three teenagers, I need to believe we will remember our long-forgotten roots. Once we acknowledge our role in the intricate beautiful web of life, we will learn to forgive one another and live together in peace.

I’m compiling a list of stories that illustrate what’s really happening in Gaza and why we all need to care.

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