Bunny, hop

Spring!

My mentor at GAO liked to draw a target on the whiteboard and label the concentric circles "could," "should," and "must" - the goal of our mid-project "message development" meetings being to acknowledge that although the analysts had undoubtedly unearthed reams of interesting information, the report that we wrote for Congress had to have a hard focus on only the clearest, most relevant investigative findings. We wouldn't be able to include everything we could say, not even everything we should say. What must we say?

This is on my mind as it's Friday again, and the to-do list I wrote on Monday (which every week I honestly believe contains the things I'm going to accomplish on Monday!) has been whittled down must by must and finally I can spend some time writing. At least until a should intervenes...

Anyway. I'm doing somewhat better. Last weekend I (1) led a service at church and (2) washed the bedroom and living room windows, inside and out, which hadn't been done in...ahem...several years. The jury is maybe out on which of those things brought more clarity into my life. 

People genuinely seemed to like the service, even though it was a bit of a comedy of errors, so there's that for my positive list. 

Outside - and now more visible through the clean windows - there's rabbit drama. Bunny Susi, who apparently suffers from a chronic parasitic infection, has now for the second time lost reliable use of her back legs and is spending her days collapsed in a heap, or occasionally attempting to hop around, falling over, and then spinning in circles. It's...pitiful and painful to watch. Is our bunnies-on-the-balcony phase coming to an end? 

Maybe. But not so fast. When we acquired bunnies Susi and Lino six years ago, the vet gave us a solemn speech about how rabbits are prey: they ensure their own survival by looking healthy and spry, so a visibly sick rabbit can be assumed to be a rabbit on death's door, and we should not expect that a vet will be able to save it. Not too long after that, Lino proved her right. Susi, though, did not get this memo. She's been in poor shape many times, and we take her to the vet, and the vet gives us the speech again and then does one or both of the grand total of two (2) things she can do for rabbits, and no one expects Susi to make it. Then Susi miraculously bounces back, again. She might yet make it to the ripe old age of 7.

This coming week's gospel is John's story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, which honestly I've never quite understood. Jesus tells her she's had five husbands; she runs off to tell everyone that he is the Messiah! Huh?

I made the mistake of watching this exact clip from The Chosen. It's everything you'd want: Jesus with his big kind eyes starts telling the Samaritan woman the story of her own life through a lens of deep compassion, and she is terrified at first but then moved to tears by this man who sees into her very soul...

Good, good, all good. But also. The talk is about the source of life, the spring that never runs dry. And maybe this isn't something the Samaritan woman needs to get from Jesus; maybe it's something she already has. She's had five husbands, for goodness' sake, and the man she is living with now is not her husband. She's been through all that, and still she's mustered the energy to walk through the midday heat to the well. 

Maybe Jesus isn't psychic, maybe he just has the time to listen and wonder aloud at how far she's made it against crushing odds. 

Maybe he thing he gives her isn't magic, but a new story about herself, not as a failure and a sinner but as a person intimately connected to the very Source of Life. Maybe a new story is magic?

 

Maybe if she and Susi can keep trying, so can I.