[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Squirrelly

For complicated reasons involving bits of personal narrative that I really 
don't want to get into, I've been noticing squirrels a lot these days. 
Sunday morning, especially, I found them all over the place: leaping up 
trees, perching on top of a van, scrambling across the road, necessitating 
some quick dodging on my part. There are those who don't mind killing a 
squirrel. There are those who are simply indifferent to squirrelicide. 
There are those who are convinced that squirrels are tree rats and deserve 
death, just as there are those who would take after pigeons with buckshot.

I have to say that I'm not greatly pleased when an urban raccoon knocks 
over my garbage can and helps him- or herself to the contents, more because 
I hate cleaning up than for any other reason. But the fact is that we share 
this landscape -- any landscape -- with God's critters. To a large extent, 
our actions play a considerable role in determining what those critters are 
and how they're going to behave.  We, not they, control our landscape; 
we're the ones who build houses in which they find warmth and shelter. 
They're only doing what comes naturally, after all. If they damage the 
shingles, it's accidental and without malice.

I wish I could say the same of us, but given (say) what's going on in Iraq, 
that's a little difficult to hang onto these days.  We do have the 
knowledge of good and of evil; we do have the power to consider our choices 
and take the road that makes God wince or rejoice. We all, without 
exception, screw up now and again and need to take a well-deserved rebuke; 
the idea, then, is to make fresh and original mistakes instead of repeating 
the same tired old ones over and over again.  And we all do well at other 
times, sometimes far better than we can see for ourselves.

What we mustn't squirrel away is innocence; we must not hoard a sense of 
unexamined well-being, especially when life is signalling us in no 
uncertain terms that maybe that sense of well-being is actually willful 
blindness -- that we're very, very carefully making sure that the left hand 
doesn't know what the right hand is up to. One of the blessedly refreshing 
bits of being a Christian is the knowledge that I can well afford to be a 
sinner because I am so secure in God's love than nothing, absolutely 
nothing, can part me from it. I have to confess that I find this a stretch 
sometimes.  But ultimately, I can manage humility, because I feel sure 
enough that I'm standing on solid ground. Humility is human is 
of-the-earth. And the opposite.

Often, when I write one of these pieces, I do a little futzing-around 
research -- just Wikipedia, nothing fancy -- and so I wikied "squirrels" 
and learned, to my delight, that squirrels have twice taken out the NASDAQ 
exchange -- accidental electrocutions. I only regret that the squirrels 
didn't survive. I am currently proofreading a textbook on economics which 
is a paean to pure, simple, unqualified, unexamined, capitalist greed, and 
the hell with the unexamined costs. *I* get what *I* want and need and if 
that screws someone else, that's just the way the acorn falls.
It delights me that a tree rat could bring a pillar of The System, however 
briefly, to a screaming halt. It's as though God put out a foot and tripped 
The System.  It's as though the world's way hiccuped, through the innocent 
act of a rodent.

Maybe even through squirrels, the Kingdom way may prevail. Who knows? 
Christ treated the poor -- those urban rodents, worthy of nothing but 
contempt -- as pricelessly valuable.  God sees the sparrow fall, Scripture 
says. Maybe God rejoices in the power and beauty and sheer daring grace of 
a squirrel's leap. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Good on ya, squirrels. Grow fat and sleep and  sassy and sleep well this 
fall, and may springtime find you with food in plenty. I might even put a 
little out for you. (Not peanuts, though. Wikipedia is stern on the peanut 
issue.)

(For NHC)