A golden leaf flutters down beside me onto the table and I pick it up to discover a pale yellow shell of a spider. Hollow and transparent. Beside it, a filmy drop of web still holding onto its leaf and the spider’s carcass from which it was spun.

I think about how everything is like something else. How my stories will outlast me. That our web is stronger than we are. So it is no wonder how long and arduous the task to write a story. And is it really ever done?

And how lovely to think that these stories we spin are the means to carry us through.

What if we got this life thing all wrong?

What if all this fighting, debating, hating and killing isn’t part of the deal? That all this ugliness is a part of human nature and not in the nature of God?

What if we’re confusing ourselves with God, applying our feelings with His feelings, our understanding with His meanings and getting it all sideways, backwards, twisted, wearing our entrails on the outside.

What if the most ugliest side of ourselves, the prideful, arrogant side of ourselves is the side that sides with God? With our Savior’s sword and our armor of righteousness. What then?

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If there ever was a book that had me at hello, this would be it. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls’ exact first words are, “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” She’s headed to a swanky New York city party when she accidentally comes across her vagrant mother. In fact, both her parents are homeless. A unique pair of individuals who chose to live on the streets repelled by conventional standards and beliefs. Her story starts from the very beginning, as far back as she can remember. A fight with a fire in the desert. This is Jeannette’s adventure story. Her secret is out, and it’s good.

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I don’t remember Harmony’s funeral. Wait, I lie. I do remember some things. Like the plain room, the color of churned butter. The metal chairs with carpeted seats. All aligned facing the open casket. The slow stream of weeping people, that treaded down the center. Reluctantly out of obligation, respect or whatever, to stare into her empty face. A mask. But this is every funeral. I wondered how many people were genuine. I tried to look into their eyes, but I was the one who looked away. I was her favorite and I didn’t feel a thing.

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