This Morning's Communion

Sitting on the back stoop, coffee cup in one hand, extending a Ritz cracker with the other. My rabbit friend, he with the badly damaged back leg, had seen me in the window and had begun his approach to the porch. No way I could ignore him, in fact I always feel honored by the recognition. So I grabbed a couple crackers and quickly but carefully stepped out the back door and settled on the stoop.

The rabbit took the cracker, as usual making his cautious circular approach, stretching his neck e-v-e-r so far, grabbing the cracker and stepping back. He dropped it on the ground, used his teeth to get it on edge, then calmly crunched away at it while I sipped my coffee and looked into those deep brown eyes that ever watch me for any sudden move.

I doubt we will ever get closer than this, physically or socially. But it’s enough.

He finished the cracker and looked at me, sniffing expectantly. I produced the second cracker, he went through his ritual, and I through mine, all scripted and holy as a formal church communion.

He finished that cracker and looked up for a third. “Nope,” I said, “two’s more than usual.” He waited a bit, then moved off with his limping lope, settling under the picnic table, where he began his morning ablutions, licking his front paws, washing his face, then each ear, slowly and meticulously. I found myself wondering why he bothers. Rabbits live such solitary lives, it’s not that any of them will care how he looks.

I got a momentary cynical flash that any predator watching from hiding would see the scene as cartoon-like and silly as we would if we saw a side of beef cleaning itself for our table. I tried to banish that thought, but it had already transformed my view of the morning ritual from communion to last rites. Seemed I’m simply offering moral and nutritional support while my friend makes his way to his inevitable ending as someone’s meal, guest of honor at his own last supper.

Then I realized something deeper was going on. He, my long-suffering rabbit friend, was simply living in the moment, without imagined and unnecessary thoughts of ritual. I recalled the words of Lao Tsu, “ritual is the husk of faith.” My rabbit friend was cleaning himself for himself, because he feels better after doing it. Not worrying or wondering about the future or the opinion of any other sentient being.

It’s the sort of perspective I claim to seek so diligently, though actually awkwardly and fitfully, and he has it simply by doing it.

As though reading my thoughts, the rabbit finished his cleaning, moved a few steps to the far edge of the picnic table, where the morning sun reaches. He stretched, settled on all fours, twitched his ears and laid them back, closed his eyes to narrow slits. Basking in the comforting warmth of morning, feeling, I suspect, that it’s been a good day thus far, and enjoying life as it has come to him.

I should be so lucky.