Cobwebs, spiders and Church

Because there is a wedding in the Church this weekend, we give it a particular clean, after all, this is a special day, there are flowers and the smell of polish.  My job is cobwebs which you don't notice until you start to look.  Even the stain glass windows have an almost unseen web across them and looking up in the porch, it looks like spider city.  Under my breath, I tell all the Church spiders there time is up for the moment and with brush and hoover, there old lacy homes are banished.  I don't think they have had to think about respinning for years.
This is not a blog about the making of a domestic goddess, it is about meditation and the spiders have spun their way in there because meditation gives you a meditative perspective on things.  The first thought was that you think things are fine just the way they are until you look and once you look you have a chance to either leave them the way they are or change them.  You sometimes need a reason to change them, so weddings are special and good will is about, you want to make everything as good as it can be for the bride and her groom, after all, you may have had a wedding or you may have a son or daughter getting married and you may have appreciated the care taken by friends and family to make things beautiful.  Once you get your eye on the workings of the cobwebby old mind, and the possible need to discard some of the webs plus the spiders who are better outside, meditation helps.   Every time you see a movement, you dissolve it and sometimes this is easy and sometimes it is cobweb after cobweb.
Of course it is all worth it when the bride and groom come into the Church and the light streams through the newly cleaned stain glass, and meditation is worth it when you begin to lighten up and realise that happiness is much much preferable to anxiety and depression, you open your eyes after meditating and the world looks beautiful.
Below is the  back of St Martin-in-the-Fields with people walking a labyrinth in 2011, you get the Church and the walking meditation all in one picture.  When you come to St Martin on November 20th, you will get the chance to meditate right inside the Church with Father Laurence Freeman and hundreds of other people.  Make sure it is in your diary.