What the Bunnies Were Made For

with Beautiful Chorus

In the middle of seminary, between year two and three, I experienced a crisis of faith. I’d been newly diagnosed with CPTSD, had escaped a draconian internship supervisor, and was thinking it might be time to call it quits on ministry. My husband William, a Welsh expat in the U.S., was going through his own crisis of homesickness. We decided it was time to take a nice long trip to Wales.

We had been to Wales many times together but mostly to visit his hometown, Swansea, his family, and the beautiful countryside of South Wales. This time, we decided to head north.

The north of Wales is gorgeous, rural, rolling and craggy, mountains and seaside and valleys and vistas. And everywhere, as far as the eye can see: sheep. Literally, every hill and dale, near and far, left and right, sometimes perilously perched between roadside and barbed wire, the landscape is dotted with white fluffy adorable balls of fuzz. It was a joy to behold. I was overcome. I begged William to let us stay. We could abandon our overwhelming lives back home and become simple shepherds in North Wales. We would buy an old barn conversion and open a yarn shop. I’d spin the yarn and name each skein after the sheep that grew the wool. I’d learn Welsh. I’d make things. I’d be happy.

When we got back home this fantasy was still fresh in my mind. I lay awake at night trying to figure out how to squeeze two sheep onto the half acre where our house stood alongside several giant evergreens. “We could find space,” I reasoned, “if we removed the swingset and the vegetable garden and the shed and the trees and the driveway.” William is a quiet man but never so aggressively quiet as when I have a terrible idea.

But I was determined. I wanted a fiber animal. I needed a fiber animal. I needed to care for it, harvest its wool, spin it into yarn, and make clothing out of it. This would be healing, to engage with a process of creation from start to finish. This would fix me. Ministry was a difficult, complicated daily job whose rewards were intangible on a good day. I wanted to make something.

Then I happened upon a woman living nearby who bred angora rabbits. Her menagerie of chickens, doves, peacocks, guinea pigs and bunnies sat on the edge of a fancy golf course. It was a jungle of plants and animals, a maze of gates and fences, all stuffed onto less than half an acre. Every so often someone from the bougie country club would walk by, staring, unable to ignore the noise and the smell.

“I only need one,” I told her. “This is a sort of experiment.” But I was seduced by dreams of my own hippie hideaway poking into the side of the millionaires I lived among. When I left her home I had three angora bunnies. And no idea what to do with them.

At first they lived in my garage. But this was unsustainable. My bunnies are all boys and they love nothing more than spraying their scent all over the walls. So I bought them a giant shed, built a fence around it, and went about creating a bunny barn paradise.

Turns out angora bunnies are a difficult, complicated daily job. My bunnies need pellet food with 18% protein content, fresh greens and alfalfa hay. They need regular combing to keep their fur from knotting. And the fur doesn’t shed, it needs to be “plucked” three or four times a year. If you don’t comb and brush and trim and pluck the fur regularly, they die. They lick themselves until a giant hairball blocks their stomach and they die.

It soon became apparent I was in a moral quandary. These weren’t happy sheep living somewhat independently on a hillside in Wales. These were angora bunnies, bred to be trapped in a shed in my backyard. These creatures don’t exist in nature. They would not survive. They lick themselves to death. Even the fur plucking, which saves their life, isn’t entirely pleasant for them. I started shaving them instead. It doesn’t create the sort of fiber that’s easy to spin, but at least it gives them the dignity of a life without pain.

And they are deeply annoyed when I trim their hair. They don’t enjoy being removed from their little hidey hole in the barn to be placed on a tiny table and examined all over. Sometimes I imagine them rolling their eyes at me. Why is she so obsessed with us?! Little do they know this is exactly what they were bred for. They were created to entertain me, to look pretty, and to make money. They were created for capitalism and they don’t even know it.

Of course, it’s better they don’t know. I’m the one struggling with the moral quandary of it. I’m the one wondering how to make their lives more than merely a means to an end. This is the beautiful burden of being human, that we see ourselves and our own human struggles in all the flora and fauna around us. It opens the possibility for compassion and empathy. It is an opportunity to make meaning where it might not otherwise exist.

The bunnies were conceived as a way for me to make something tangible, to be part of a system of production, but instead they brought me right back to the intangible. How do I make meaning? Making meaning is not often valued as a primary human endeavor. The systems that organize human life value making money instead. And when we believe there is no inherent meaning to life, it is easy to allow the system to insert its own interpretation.

But we were created for more. Perhaps we were created to find meaning in places where it might not otherwise exist. Perhaps we were created to make meaning. When the larger world insists that some place or some group or some precious someone doesn’t matter, we can push back and say that this place, this person, this right here, where we find ourselves for whatever reason and in whatever circumstance: this has meaning. We care for it and value it, and we value the love we give it. And it doesn’t need to do anything to earn the right of dignity and compassion and empathy. It has meaning because we have named it as meaningful.

Making meaning is a ministry to which we are all called. And more often than not, it will lose money and provide no tangibles and go entirely unnoticed. But if we are brave enough to keep showing up for what we value, we will slowly create the world around us that we wish to see. One that is more humane, more just, and more loving.

May we find meaning this Sunday morning, out beyond inhumane systems of production, where we name for ourselves what matters most. May we find peace in this place, even when the work is difficult and complicated. And may we never forget that each of our lives is inherently meaningful. Because we have named it so.