Writing Prompt #16 Write about faith from the point of view of a non-human being (animal, bug, bird, etc.)

 

Community

Sunday morning

Sitting in church and murmuring responses or singing hymns

Waiting my turn in the last pew to go up and receive communion

All of a sudden

Between my feet

And from the depths under the last seat against the wall

Crawled a spider

Not a cute, storybook spider

But a gargantuan, phobia-triggering Northwest wolf spider

It’s blackish brown legs

Swept over the wood floor

Like car wash bristles

And. It. Was. Heading. Toward. The. Altar.

Usually, when one encounters a spider

Especially a big one

They either assign someone *else* to kill it

Or leave/burn down the house/book a hotel room for the night

until they can compartmentalize the vision of the spider in their mental “do not think about” box

(I assume everyone has one of those, right?)

However, we were in church – extreme ‘thou-shalt-not-kill’ territory

It’s crumpled shoe-printed body in the middle of the aisle

Would be an unwelcome sight to the other parishioners,

cueing up in the communion line

faced with the Samaritan struggle and moral dilemma of stepping around it

Or trying to help/dispose of its body, depending on it’s life status

I did nothing.

I let it pass

It scuttled out of the pew aisle like a wild multi-limbed Roomba

Passed the communion line

And disappeared

I never saw it again

But I also

a.      Never saw it’s crumpled body laying in the aisle

b.      Never saw one of the pastors stoop down past the gray-streaked backs-of-heads in the front row

-        But  -

c.      We are a church that welcomes all to the communion table

Regardless of age, religious background, or anything else.

The spider probably slipped somewhere between a crack in the floorboards and baseboards

Or braved the gust of the heater vent by the stained glass window

But it was welcome.