My dogs have this curious notion that they are criminally underfed which leads to extreme begging from the time we get up to when we feed them and from about 4:00 pm to when they get dinner. It also means that they stare excitedly at squirrels running around the backyard and consider them elusive food sources. Then when evening comes, it also means that any rabbits trapped in our fenced-in back yard might also prove to be food. So, on three occasions now Maggie and Sydney have managed to trap a rabbit before Lisa and I could save it. The first time it was still there in the morning. The time after that it was gone. Last night, in a moment of pride and generosity, Maggie brought the screaming and crying rabbit to the sliding glass door on to the deck and that’s about the time that Lisa called me hysterically to help pull the dogs off the rabbit.The short story is that the rabbit didn’t make it. The longer story is that we managed to get the dogs off the rabbit and put them in the garage. At this point the rabbit was still breathing but wasn’t moving and I figured this might end up like the last time and it would regain its wits after a while and saunter off overnight. And if it didn’t, I’d get the pleasure of scooping it into a trash bag the next morning and throwing it out with the trash. So, that’s where I left things and went back upstairs.
What I was expecting when I came back downstairs a little while later was to see Lisa looking forlorn as she gazed out the window at the rabbit. What I wasn’t expecting was to see her in tears kneeling by the door with the rabbit cradled in her arms. Apparently my first question was, “You brought it inside?!” and that’s the point where she explained that she took its pulse and felt its heart slowing and couldn’t stand the thought of it dying out there alone in the cold and rain so she brought it inside and held it in a muddy microfiber towel that we used to wipe off the dogs’ paws.
9 times out of 10 I would have ran through the logical arguments against this, which are many and mainly having to do with the inherent and unintended cruelty of the natural world and the rabbit not understanding her intentions nor ever knowing the comfort and warmth of a home to begin with, but something stopped me. What I was witnessing was a simple act of compassion that was very small and meant something maybe only to that rabbit, but it was an act of compassion all the same. And in that moment I realized that any act of compassion, no matter the scale or the reason or the consequence, is a much grander act than indifference solidly backed with logic. What 9 times out of 10 would have seemed silly seemed profound. Lisa didn’t hold that rabbit for any other reason than it was a fellow living creature that had known a hard life and was going out in a senseless death at the hands of some dogs who probably wouldn’t even know what to do with the it once it stopped squeaking. I don’t know if that rabbit felt or understood the compassion or if it was even more terrified that this human had picked it up. But I do know it had a profound effect on me.
Later that night we talked about it and Lisa rightly pointed out that she thought I might be mad that she had brought the rabbit inside. I suppose the 9-out-of-10 confession points to her probably being right. But what really gives me pause here is that maybe means I don’t really understood compassion as well as I ought to. Logical indifference does simplify life quite a bit, after all. The homeless guy with the sign asking for food or work is obviously addicted to something. The driver of the car that just cut me off is, no doubt, a direct descendant of many generations of very sinister people. The kids who aren’t part of our youth ministry probably don’t care anyways and there’s no point reaching out to them. Put in those terms, logical indifference is convenience and compassion is and should be ridiculously inconvenient. And that’s doubly convicting when you spend time railing against convenience in one of your favorite posts on your own blog.
So, if you’ve been paying attention, this has been epiphany based on a rabbit dying in my wife’s arms. Something that happens probably thousands of times daily across the world (well the dying part, not the arms part). Something that, in the big scheme of things, is a pretty silly thing to get worked up about. Something that some of you are still thinking, “So what? It’s just a rabbit,” about. And you’re right. But I’m right too. Compassion is kind of a lost art but it’s one of the essential things that make us human. If the positions were reversed, that rabbit wouldn’t care at all about my wife dying because animals just don’t have that capacity. But we do and we have it for a reason. It may not mean anything to that homeless person who really is just trying to score booze or drugs, but seeing others demonstrate compassion can wake us up to our own capacity for compassion and that’s an amazing thing.
“The needs are great, and none of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.”
-Mother Teresa
