Br’er Bunny made it onto my sh*t list this week.
Perhaps I can be forgiven both the enmity and the expletive – having spent the better part of last week prepping and planting and mulching our modest little garden of perennials.
The goal was to have a variety of flowers – yellow, fuchsia, red, white, purple – to bloom and delight our eyes throughout the summer and fall. So you can imagine my angst when Br’er Bunny took a big bite out of this grand plan less than a week after I’d hosed off my garden tools.
“Have you been watering the perennials?” my Sweetie asked. “Some of them look distressed.” And sure enough, it was easy to see from the kitchen window that a couple of the plants were mere shadows of the selves they’d been just a day or two before.
Egad…what happened to my tender blooms?!?
A closer inspection revealed the actual culprit – not inadequate hydration, but intense hunger. A local bunny had turned much of my back-breaking labor into his own personal salad bar.
“Must be a vegetarian,” I thought ryely, noting that mere steps away the bunny could have hopped toward a sumptuous buffet serving up hundreds (if not thousands) of protein-rich cicada carcasses.
Bunnies don’t find bugs tempting as a snack, I guess.
But we didn’t chew on the dilemma for long. Instead, we made a quick trip to the hardware store and secured some metal mesh. Alas, our tender little plants now stand imprisoned in the landscaping bed, but at least they have a chance (if I remember to water them, of course).
And while I wait for a (re-)flourishing to occur, I am moved to meditate on the Pentecost rhythms that my handiwork has perhaps disturbed.
Cages are now in place, where I once anticipated delicate natural beauty to appear. My underlying hope: Br’er Bunny will have to look elsewhere to obtain his leafy snacks in the gloaming, while the bees retain free rein to gather their nectar. Honestly, I would tame all these forces I suppose – make them bend to my will, not the Holy Spirit’s. But the Advocate is there to remind me with a whisper that my tiny self-centered designs would much diminish the beauty God desires to unleash on the world…here, there, everywhere.
And so with a humble heart on this great feast day, I acknowledge my limits. I accept with gratitude my createdness. And I try my best to pray along with the Psalmist:
If You take away their breath, they perish
and return to their dust.
When You send forth Your spirit, they are created,
and You renew the face of the earth.
Natural beauty…not!
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 