For a while I believed that community was a container, a basket dexterously woven with tools of connection, and that once inside, I would be held in the comfort and safety of belonging, ideally forever. Now I think of community as a web. Each of us stands at a spoke, a meeting point, holding onto the threads radiating outward from our particular position. We can maintain our threads or let them fray. A few tattered threads won’t break the web, but too many will tear apart our section of it, and the damage will perhaps cast us loose, by accident or by choice. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it has been a useful one when I find myself bitter that no-one is holding the basket I had imagined myself in. If there is a spider, an ultimate weaver, she stands at a distance, shaped out of different matter, on a wholly different plane, making repairs only when it suits her.

Or perhaps I need to learn to trust the spider… I can hold my own threads – usually – but the pattern is well beyond me. 

From 100 Words: The Beauty of Brevity. Word prompt: spider.