The gift of a rabbit
Saturday, in the midst of sermon writing and Sunday morning preparations, a parishioner showed up at my door. I live in the Rectory which is on church property, but it is unusual for parishioners to come to the door without being invited. I was on my way out to walk my dogs, so I met the parishioner outside. She told me that we have a rabbit in the community garden. This might not seem unusual, a rabbit in a garden. However, a couple of years ago we installed a high fence including a rabbit guard and we haven't had many critters in the garden since. We wondered if the rabbit had somehow snuck in when someone left the gate open? We decided to open the gate and let the rabbit out. Later, after my walk, I saw the rabbit outside the garden, nibbling on grass. I presumed it would find its way home. However, Sunday morning the rabbit was in front of the church, eating grass. That was when I was certain that this rabbit was not wild, but a pet that someone had abandoned in the garden. With the help of my husband and a few other people, we caught the rabbit and put him in one of our cat carriers. We gave him a soft towel to nestle in and a bowl of water.
All morning we checked in on the rabbit, petting him (it is a boy) and giving him love and affection. We even found a home for him and made announcements that if anyone heard of a lost rabbit to let us know. He went home, snuggled in the arms of a young woman who was already in love with him. I am fairly certain that we will never know who this rabbit belonged too. I imagine he was intentionally abandoned in the church community garden by someone who wanted the rabbit to have food and perhaps be found and cared for.
Still, how sad to just leave him there. Was he terrified to be left? Was he afraid being outside all night? What if the hawk had come around, as it does from time to time? Or the stray cat that roams the property, or the coyotes? Not wanting to contain a wild rabbit we left a vulnerable domestic rabbit outside all day and night. It's amazing he survived.
As the rabbit left for his new home, in the loving arms of his new caretaker, I the Vestry meeting to order. I prayed as I always do in thanksgiving for all the blessings of this parish and for the care and wisdom of the Vestry members in their stewardship of this church and its members. The meeting continued with a discussion on the book, "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander. Its been my practice to begin Vestry meetings with something - a meditation or a Bible Study - that sets the tone for our meetings, reminding us that our work has a spiritual dimension and is not just a methodical process of doing the business of the church.
Racism is alive and well in this parish despite the heart-felt notion that we welcome everyone. People will acknowledge that racism is in us but getting us to talk about it and look at it and wrestle with it and begin to reconcile it is whole other matter. So, we're reading the book, my hope being that it leads to some deeper insight. The discussion was decent for our first go at it.
Three hours later, after haggling over Bylaw revisions, budget deficit, organ refurbishments, our 150th anniversary year plans, and other items, we were about to conclude the meeting. It had been a long, tiresome day, and like most Sundays with Vestry meetings, I had a headache and was worn thin. It was then that a Vestry member went back to our book discussion and wondered why, with all that we had to do, and considering that our meeting had run an hour over time, we were using time to discuss this book? Not that the book was a bad book for discussion, but perhaps the time used for that discussion could be better spent? How was this book discussion informing us in our mission, in our budget deficit? Some of the members of the Vestry spoke up saying that the book and the discussion were important to them, that it was feeding them spiritually.
I should have left it at that.
But I did not.
A nerve was struck in me. No. A nerve had been sliced open in me and words tumbled out with a passion and vehemence that I rarely show in leadership.
I spoke about the need for us, the Vestry, to engage in spiritual work, that meetings cannot be all about business. We need to be doing work that invites us into a deeper level of transformation. I said that I am doing this kind of work all the time, including in the sermons I preach. I don't want to do this work by myself. I am inviting us to look at the racism and prejudice within us, at the ways we live narrow lives and contain the Good News of the Gospel rather than taking risks. Instead of following Jesus to the table, to the mountain, to the garden, to the cross, we prefer to talk about "business." As if that is the real work we are supposed to be about. I said if this is what the Vestry wants to do, all it wants to do, then they can do it, but I will do not want to come to that kind of a Vestry meeting. They can do it with out me.
Yes, I think I lost it.
Like the rabbit.
It was one thing when he was snug and safe in the garden, at least there he was contained and had a rich garden to feed him. But put outside the fence and left to fend for himself throughout the night, put him at great risk. As these words poured out of me, unbound, I felt myself cut open, the nerve severed. Vulnerable. On the cross.
I aim to be a voice of reason. I strive to listen carefully and speak clearly and concisely and logically. I hate it when I lose it and words pour out of me like they did yesterday. I don't like being that out of control, that impassioned, speaking without thinking first about the words I was saying.
I worry that someone, because I was so emotive, will take offense at what I said or how I said it. I worry because that's what has happened in the past. People get mad at me, even leave the church over things like this.
Women cannot lose it. We are supposed to be nice, thoughtful, smile, take it lying down, stay confined with the fence of what is socially appropriate.
You know how it is, as a woman, to speak this way? It gets distorted and all kinds of other unrelated emotions get attached to what was said and how it was said.
By the time I got home the headache included my jaw and my neck. I ached all over from words said and words left unspoken. I took two ibuprofen, walked my dogs, did some yoga and meditated.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading, drinking tea, or knitting. I worked to soothe my soul. But I also thought about why I was feeling, still hours after the meeting, as if I were sliced open and raw, with tears welling behind my eyes, but never spent.
And this is why. Transformation is hard work. It requires deconstructing everything we know about ourselves and then having the courage to build again, anew. With new insight and information and trust. Transformation is not always reasonable or thought through. It certainly isn't cautious. Its perilous.
I do hope that the work I am about as a parish priest is transformational, that the people I serve grow in faith and maturity as Christians, that their lives are changed for the better.
I also know that this transformation begins with me.
Raw, vulnerable, real, and outside the gate of security.
All morning we checked in on the rabbit, petting him (it is a boy) and giving him love and affection. We even found a home for him and made announcements that if anyone heard of a lost rabbit to let us know. He went home, snuggled in the arms of a young woman who was already in love with him. I am fairly certain that we will never know who this rabbit belonged too. I imagine he was intentionally abandoned in the church community garden by someone who wanted the rabbit to have food and perhaps be found and cared for.
Still, how sad to just leave him there. Was he terrified to be left? Was he afraid being outside all night? What if the hawk had come around, as it does from time to time? Or the stray cat that roams the property, or the coyotes? Not wanting to contain a wild rabbit we left a vulnerable domestic rabbit outside all day and night. It's amazing he survived.
As the rabbit left for his new home, in the loving arms of his new caretaker, I the Vestry meeting to order. I prayed as I always do in thanksgiving for all the blessings of this parish and for the care and wisdom of the Vestry members in their stewardship of this church and its members. The meeting continued with a discussion on the book, "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander. Its been my practice to begin Vestry meetings with something - a meditation or a Bible Study - that sets the tone for our meetings, reminding us that our work has a spiritual dimension and is not just a methodical process of doing the business of the church.
Racism is alive and well in this parish despite the heart-felt notion that we welcome everyone. People will acknowledge that racism is in us but getting us to talk about it and look at it and wrestle with it and begin to reconcile it is whole other matter. So, we're reading the book, my hope being that it leads to some deeper insight. The discussion was decent for our first go at it.
Three hours later, after haggling over Bylaw revisions, budget deficit, organ refurbishments, our 150th anniversary year plans, and other items, we were about to conclude the meeting. It had been a long, tiresome day, and like most Sundays with Vestry meetings, I had a headache and was worn thin. It was then that a Vestry member went back to our book discussion and wondered why, with all that we had to do, and considering that our meeting had run an hour over time, we were using time to discuss this book? Not that the book was a bad book for discussion, but perhaps the time used for that discussion could be better spent? How was this book discussion informing us in our mission, in our budget deficit? Some of the members of the Vestry spoke up saying that the book and the discussion were important to them, that it was feeding them spiritually.
I should have left it at that.
But I did not.
A nerve was struck in me. No. A nerve had been sliced open in me and words tumbled out with a passion and vehemence that I rarely show in leadership.
I spoke about the need for us, the Vestry, to engage in spiritual work, that meetings cannot be all about business. We need to be doing work that invites us into a deeper level of transformation. I said that I am doing this kind of work all the time, including in the sermons I preach. I don't want to do this work by myself. I am inviting us to look at the racism and prejudice within us, at the ways we live narrow lives and contain the Good News of the Gospel rather than taking risks. Instead of following Jesus to the table, to the mountain, to the garden, to the cross, we prefer to talk about "business." As if that is the real work we are supposed to be about. I said if this is what the Vestry wants to do, all it wants to do, then they can do it, but I will do not want to come to that kind of a Vestry meeting. They can do it with out me.
Yes, I think I lost it.
Like the rabbit.
It was one thing when he was snug and safe in the garden, at least there he was contained and had a rich garden to feed him. But put outside the fence and left to fend for himself throughout the night, put him at great risk. As these words poured out of me, unbound, I felt myself cut open, the nerve severed. Vulnerable. On the cross.
I aim to be a voice of reason. I strive to listen carefully and speak clearly and concisely and logically. I hate it when I lose it and words pour out of me like they did yesterday. I don't like being that out of control, that impassioned, speaking without thinking first about the words I was saying.
I worry that someone, because I was so emotive, will take offense at what I said or how I said it. I worry because that's what has happened in the past. People get mad at me, even leave the church over things like this.
Women cannot lose it. We are supposed to be nice, thoughtful, smile, take it lying down, stay confined with the fence of what is socially appropriate.
You know how it is, as a woman, to speak this way? It gets distorted and all kinds of other unrelated emotions get attached to what was said and how it was said.
By the time I got home the headache included my jaw and my neck. I ached all over from words said and words left unspoken. I took two ibuprofen, walked my dogs, did some yoga and meditated.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading, drinking tea, or knitting. I worked to soothe my soul. But I also thought about why I was feeling, still hours after the meeting, as if I were sliced open and raw, with tears welling behind my eyes, but never spent.
And this is why. Transformation is hard work. It requires deconstructing everything we know about ourselves and then having the courage to build again, anew. With new insight and information and trust. Transformation is not always reasonable or thought through. It certainly isn't cautious. Its perilous.
I do hope that the work I am about as a parish priest is transformational, that the people I serve grow in faith and maturity as Christians, that their lives are changed for the better.
I also know that this transformation begins with me.
Raw, vulnerable, real, and outside the gate of security.
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