I sat on the back porch the other night.   I have my patio table out there and that's where I sit at least 3 times a day while Ginger wanders around the yard doing her thing.  The porch light was on and I sat there watching a spider (my spider) working furiously in it's web.  This spider had been there for a few weeks, had grown before my eyes, and as it grew it seemed to extend it's own little world outward periodically.  It's web started out very small and by the night I last saw it, which just happened to be the evening before a thunderstorm,  the size of its web had multiplied many times. 
  As I sat there and watched I remember thinking how large the spider itself had become and wondered if maybe I should get some bug spray or a flyswatter and just get rid of it.  I couldn't do that ... after watching this creature for so long it just seemed unnecessarily cruel of me to destroy it. 
  I could hear thunder rolling far off so I knew a storm was coming; and as I watched I realized the spider knew it too.  It was working faster and more frantically than I had ever seen it work.  Back and forth, up and down, around and around... it was moving and working so quickly, almost furiously,  in preparation for the storm.  I remember wondering how much of it's web would remain after the storm came through, and if it would simply rebuild it's home. 
  The next morning when I took my coffee and Ginger out to the porch the first thing I did was look for the spider.  It was gone, no web, no spider.  Nothing...

  How like the spider we are in our efforts to build a fortress that will sustain on this earth...