It was a quiet morning on the island, fog-shrouded and suffused with the subtle perfume of sea roses. Out in the yard, he folded an aluminum-folding chair, put it under his arm and stepped onto the empty dirt road. As he walked, he passed ranks of blue and purple lupine standing at quiet attention on both sides of the road. After a while, he turned off into a field and waded through the wet grass to his favorite sitting place behind a deserted cottage.
 Unfolding the chair and sitting down, he breathed and relaxed into the conversation of crows and birdsong. He listened to the pulse of the ocean and crickets and his beating heart. He listened inside and out, expecting nothing, simply observing the movement of his mind until it came to rest in its own perfection. It was like a stream returning to the ocean and yet, it was beyond experience.
 After a while, he stretched and yawned and welcomed the day. Looking around, he spied a big spider web in the old lilac bush nearby. Moving closer, he observed that each strand of the web was strung with dewdrops and each drop was an upside-down prism of the world. The web sagged a little under the weight of its many worlds and in the middle of it all sat a fat spider. She was the essence of stillness, of waiting without waiting, of being without self-concern; the spider, the sparkling web, the lilac tree, the gentle breeze, the birds, the sky and clouds, the spinning earth with its oceans, mountains, its billions of people, the whole universe, in its incomprehensible size and complexity, having all been formed without a single thought of ‘my web’, ‘my sky’ or ’my universe’.
 He stood for a while in the innocence of that morning, like the spider, wanting nothing. As he picked up and folded the chair, he recalled a koan from his Zen days, many years ago; “Who is it who stands alone?’ As he turned back onto the road home, he walked without walking, whistled without whistling.
There was nothing left to do
and no one to do it.Â
Nothing in front
and nothing behind.
It was a free morning.
                                             Â
I read this outloud to my husband.
He walked with you , and was in the same moment as the spider.
Such words, that moment,brought tears to his eyes.
Devoid of human sound the stillness of the always moving earth allows connection to the beauty, and the quiet complexity of our surroundings. What better to teach us this than a garden spider patiently waiting in her masterpiece web. Thank you Mike for this reminder.