What the cat dragged in

The other day the cat appeared at the back door clutching in his mouth the limp and lifeless body of a baby rabbit. I tried in haste to remove this beautiful baby from sight before my daughter had a chance to witness it. (To say she loves rabbits would be a bit of an understatement.) However living in a household of male siblings, who called her with childish glee to come and see what the cat had brought, I did not achieve this. I expected much weeping and whaling as befits the usual amateur dramatics of an 8 year old girl. Instead she took the floppy flimsy body in her hands and cuddled it. She said goodbye in the most mature of ways, then set about learning all she could from this tiny body. She did not chastise the cat, as I had, but congratulated him on his hunting skills. She thanked me for the chance to hold a rabbit, that though lifeless was still warm and fluffy.

Her acceptance of the crueller and more vicious side of nature shocked me slightly. Whilst I too had spent many hours as a child looking at nature and it's revelations. I seemed to be somewhat shielded from the crueller side, until one day I rescued a baby bird. I looked after it so well, until I had to go to school. My mother left it to die. I shall only say that my acceptance that not everything could live a long and happy life was not quite so graceful as my daughters. I spent many long days afterwards feeling guilty for doing nothing other than that I had no choice over.

It is a revelation that we all go through. That nature, that in Spring and Summer brings us such abundance of life, beauty and fruit, must as the seasons change bring decay and death as the changes set in. This cycle is excellently portrayed in the poem "Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney. He writes of how in Summer he wanders encountering the beauty of frogspawn and tadpoles, dragonflies and butterflies. That one hot summer's day had changed into "gross-bellied frogs"  that  "Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned and ran." These are two quotes picked for an understanding of how his view changed. I heartily recommend reading the poem to get a full effect of how his journey through the seasons affected him.

His poem though and the experiences above I have spoken of above, are more than just the passing of seasons. They are a metaphor for life, that all life must change from good to bad, beautiful to ugly, from breath to death. Seamus Heaney himself had had the most rude awakening to how cruel life could be, when his younger brother was killed. For most of us the shock that life is not all joy and pleasure comes in a way that is less life changing.  However Seamus Heaney is not alone in experiencing how treacherous life can be to the living.

The question is do we let it stop us in our tracks, hold us in place, freeze us in grief, turn us to fear, anger and hatred. Do we start to resent the cruel and heartless world in which we sometimes dwell? Or do we embrace the fact that life has a circle, that we can learn from pain and change the world with love, care and faith. The death and resurrection of Christ, is  the prime example of the latter. God knew that for us to truly appreciate the glory and wonder of the kingdom of heaven, we had to see suffering and death first. We had to understand pain to wonder at peace. When life is limp and lifeless, it is time to pick it up, cuddle it and transform it into something new.

Today as I pray I ask just this. That you, gracious Lord, grant me wisdom to see the path that you wish me to walk. That you grant me strength to walk along it. That you open my mind to see you in the suffering of others and the courage I need to change what little I can. That I may see you in them and they see you in me. I ask that you grant me the grace to be grateful for the many blessings you have sent me, and contentment that I may not ask for more than I am due.