Posts Tagged nature
Sometimes the Rabbit Dies
Posted by annaldavis in Writing on March 8, 2011
a.k.a. “Kill Your Darlings.” No, I did not intentionally kill the orphaned bunny discussed in last week’s post. But despite our best efforts, little Hopscotch was found dead early Monday morning. So now that I’m no longer nursing a newborn rabbit with an eye dropper, I guess I have no choice but to continue with my writing goals. And I can’t help but think of Faulkner’s writing advice to kill your darlings.
While “your darlings” can apply to fictional characters, this advice actually refers to those parts of our writing that we love. The parts that are brilliant, those beautiful and artistic phrases (pages, even whole chapters) that remind us why we became writers in the first place – because we are gifted! Clearly!
Unfortunately, that obviously brilliant prose may be like the plight of most orphaned baby rabbits. Can you imagine a world where no darling bunnies died? We would be overrun with rabbits. Rabbits here, rabbits there, rabbits everywhere!
Now there are deeper, spiritual meanings to this advice as well. Sometimes we can become so obsessed with something that it takes over, when really it should have kicked the bucket long ago. Narcissism, addictions, and all forms of idolatry, for example. We must kill our darlings in order to move on, to find the life we’re meant to have.
If you read books about writing, you’ll notice that Faulkner’s advice is quickly followed by something to this effect: “don’t delete that writing entirely! Move it to another file, and learn from it.”
You know, we learned a lot from our newborn bunny. Our whole family grew and changed through the experience. We learned about how to sustain a delicate living being, and how to let go when we didn’t beat the odds.
In both writing and life, learning when to let go is no small matter.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Posted by annaldavis in Cyberculture, Everything Else on March 2, 2011
Two dead newborn bunnies. One AWOL mother. And cuddled deep inside a nest of twigs and fur… one squirmy orphan, straining upward in search of milk.
This was our dilemma a few days ago, and so far we’ve kept that orphaned bunny alive for 48 hours. But it’s a minute-by-minute operation. Some might say it’s impossible. Did you know that fewer than 10% of handfed wild baby bunnies survive? They are among the most difficult of all wild animals to rear from infancy.
In pop culture, “the rabbit hole” is often used to describe an adventure into the unknown. Our backyard rabbit hole certainly qualifies as an unknown adventure.
Could it be that life itself is a rabbit hole? We see death and abandonment all around, gruesome spiritual realities that discourage and dishearten. But there is life down there somewhere!! And too few of us go looking for that last surviving bunny. IF we do find it, the whole thing just seems downright impossible.
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) is one of my favorite movies, and I can’t help but think of it now, as we work toward the “impossible” task of raising a wild bunny. I’ve posted a short clip from the movie.
Something to consider: If life is a rabbit hole, with spiritual casualties all around, then who is our jabberwocky? What six impossible things can we believe, before breakfast?
1. There is a drink that will end my thirst forever.
2. There is a bread that can make me grow spiritually.
3. God is working all the time.
4. Jesus is alive.
5. There is a place called the Kingdom of God.
6. I can do all things through Christ.
blood of a dead man
Posted by annaldavis in Cyberculture on February 23, 2011
According to NASA, dead zones in the ocean have “grown explosively in the past half-century.” A marine dead zone results when an area of the ocean is so low in dissolved oxygen that life cannot survive. The map embedded in this post shows the number and size of current aquatic dead zones.
You’ll notice that most of the affected ocean is along the most populated coastlines. Man-made chemicals like fertilizer run off into the oceans and upset the microbial balance of the water, which in turn affects oxygen levels. NASA concludes that “mass killing of fish and other sea life often results.”
This development reminds me of Revelation 16:3, which says that when the second bowl of God’s wrath is poured out, the sea will be “turned into blood like that of a dead man” and every living thing in the sea will die.
I have often interpreted this verse to mean that the water will literally turn into blood, much as it did in Pharaoh’s day. But the verse actually says that it turns into blood LIKE that of a dead man.
One of the main characteristics of the death process is that the heart stops pumping blood around the body. As this happens, the tissues and cells lack oxygen and quickly begin to die. So the blood of a dead man is low in oxygen, resulting in the death of cells and organs.
Therefore a sea that is like dead man’s blood would be low in oxygen, resulting in the death of fish and sea life.
Could it be that we are seeing this prophecy from Revelation fulfilled, right before our eyes? How interesting that science might eventually confirm what John foresaw thousands of years ago, that the seas would become like the blood of a dead man.
To track the growing aquatic dead zones, click here.
