Through the Mist

My daughter has for about 15 years known a stuffed purple rabbit, insouciantly named ‘Rabbito’.

She’s quite a handful. The rabbit, I mean, tho come to mention it …

Anyway.

I provide the voice. Rabbito tends to suffix ‘-ito’ to words — I am Papito, for instance — an ‘l’ in most any location is likely to render as a ‘w’ — wocation, let’s say — and Rabbito forever retains her youth [even as my daughter, oddly, grows], hence her child’s view of, well, the world, with, therefore, limits and ignorance on the one paw aside wonder and uncertainty on the other.

She doesn’t always hear things ‘as they are but that’s no reason to stop talking.

Maybe a bit wike Emily Litella, age 9.

[Emilito Witewa, Rabbito might say.]

At one time predating this cartoon, then, Rabbito remarked on Jesus’ kindness in ‘heawing da weopards’, and which we eventually got sorted out, with the little purple one noting that Jesus prolly wd heal the leopards as well and perhaps even had.

[There’s also a decent-sized backstory to Rabbito, a family history. Her roots are Cajun, well back into the history of our country, to a leoporine family named Rabbiteaux that spoke a Lapine dialect and moved west with America, and to avoid water moccasins, only to find a land of rattlesnakes. Domestication has been bery good for dem.]

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It’s a thing we might do raising our young: voice stuffed purple rabbits.

In a hundred or two thousand years this will be hard to explain exactly.

Until readers-researchers-reviewers remember: ah yes, they’re people.

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These are my favorite parts of most anything, the deeply human bits. I like it in biographies which, having aged [and hopefully begun to elder] apace with my daughter I’ve begun to read more of. It’s wondrous in live, personal relationships [are we yet surprised by how non-human our bits can be? that is hope, my friends, and we shd be more afraid when we stop being shocked] as well. It’s awesome in scripture.

  • The man born blind snarking on the Pharisees, while his poor folks fret their rep, in John 9
    [don’t judge harshly; they prolly had a mortgage … and that son of theirs, always a burden.]
  • Elijah ass-whyppin’ the prophets of Baal, then wussing over Jezebel one page later, 1 Kings
    [and he’s a bit snarky on them too — maybe your god is taking a leak? Oh the humanity … ]
  • Abe telling the king she’s his sister, then shocked-just-shocked the plan goes south, Gen 20
    [there is some talk that Sarah was both wife and sister. My but people do gossip, won’t we?]

As someone once said of Flannery’s work, “Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do.”

Meaning the best way to read such is as real people doing real things. Deal with the miracles — blindness cured; prophets consumed; untouched comeliness — at some point but first, just read, baby. Stop talking and make sure we heard that right.

As with poems, which we get in a lather about trying to get, when the first task is simply just what is going on here?

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Works for Jesus, too.

Sometimes we make it, him, so complicated.

What was he writing in the dirt? Personally, I think he was doodling. Wasn’t writin’ nuthin’. Drawing small, innocuous pictures. This is how irrelevant these bozos were. And of course he also doesn’t skimp on the admonition at the end.

Real life.

Of late it occurred that several times when Jesus escapes a crowd seeking either to crown or to kill him, and eventually they did both, it is given that he escaped almost ethereally or with a Star Trek transporter or something. The text often reads something like, ‘he passed through the midst of them.’

Truth is, he prolly just Walked. Right. Out. He’s sauntering and they’re looking at each other —

Erm … whattya we do?
I dunno, whatya you wanna do?
He’s getting away — shd we grab him?
Seems like someone oughta, I mean … he’s right there.
OK, you first, get aholt of his … if we can just … OK … maybe if we …

They’re very humanly hemming and hawing and he … passes through the midst of them.

Or as Rabbito wd say, da mist … which also works.

She’s usually right.

Just ask her.

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