It can be a small thing that grabs your attention the most. 

Texas in the springtime is unpredictable at best. There will be days and days of rain and foul weather and then one day you wake up and the sun is out, and a cool breeze is blowing, and the sky is that particular shade of blue that gives it the look of expensively dyed silk, so deep and rich you could drink it and it would taste like water from a cool spring.

On just such a day I decided to officially recognize the coming of the warm months by mowing the lawn for the first time this season. I don't particularly care for lawn work, but it was one of those days when any excuse, no matter how trivial, is enough to get me outside and in fresh air. I could have stayed inside and just read a book; my wife had taken the kids off for errands and storytime, but to do so would have felt like blasphemy. So I pulled on an old pair of sneakers and drew the mower out of the garage, loving the force of it as it started up. It sputtered once, twice, then caught and roared into life. Lawn mowers to me seem like fiercely living things, like lions or pumas, ready to pounce and devour.

I had made no more than a single pass over the side yard when I saw the rabbit. It was a tiny thing, like a little stuffed bunny intended for a baby's crib. It was brown, speckled, no larger than a kitten. As I brought the mower around for a second pass, I saw it lurching across the yard, clearly in distress. It collapsed and lay on its side, shuddering.

I let the mower die, and walked toward the animal, filled at the same time with wonder and with foreboding. It was such a tiny thing, but it was also a wild thing, and I didn't know what to expect from it. I stood over it and looked. It seemed so tiny lying there in the grass, on its side, now just shaking. Its mouth was working, as if it were straining for its mother's nipple. I was a bit frightened to touch it.

What was wrong with it? Had I run over it with the mower? The part of it I could see was not visibly damaged. I gingerly rolled it over with the toe of my shoe, expecting to see a bloody and ravaged underside. But the animal seemed perfectly intact. Perhaps I'd simply scared it witless, sending the mower thundering by as it lay on its back considering the blue sky and the perfect breeze. Ignoring the voice of my mother shrieking not to touch a wounded animal, I bent down and picked it up.

It was so soft and warm, and I was overwhelmed by the power contained in this simple living thing. Rabbits in Texas are everywhere; my daughter and I see at least a dozen of them every time we walk to the park. Cradling this limp creature in my palm, I felt as if God was inducting me into some mystery of life whose meaning I was nowhere near grasping.

It opened its mouth once, twice. It turned its eye lazily to look at me, or maybe I just imagined it. I began to think how lovely it would be to bring the bunny inside and nurse him back to health. My daughter would be overjoyed; she would help me feed him and cuddle him, and maybe we'd even keep him as a pet. We might call him "Bugs" or "Thumper."

While I was thinking of a name, the small rabbit died in my hands. One minute he was breathing, and I could feel his heart beating beneath his fur, and the next minute his searching eye went blank, unseeing. I tried to close the eye, but could not.

Feeling not even a little bit foolish, I paced around the garage, holding the rabbit against my chest. I didn't know what to do. I felt like something precious had just eluded me, slipped out of my grasp. But at the same time, I felt as though I'd been caught by something; something had lurched into my life and grabbed onto me, although I wasn't sure exactly what it was, or what my responsibility to it was.

He was still soft and warm; his little legs drooped over my closed fingers. His ears ruffled in the breeze when I went back out into the yard. For a few minutes I just stared at him, looking into his eye, wondering what secrets he had. For a few minutes, I was spellbound.

Then his bladder released and he peed on me--his final act of protest against the cruelty of life, I guess--and the spell was broken.

I went back into the garage, and finding nothing even remotely suitable for a rabbit's casket, I had to settle for a freezer bag that I found on the garage floor. A dead bunny in a freezer bag is just about the most depressing thing you could ever hope to see. Oh, the privilege of living in suburbia where the meat we grill and fry and bake and devour offers scant evidence of furry animals dying, alone and scared, creatures of God just like me.

I took the shovel and buried him in the field out behind the back fence. When I replaced the divot of sod I'd carefully laid aside, it was hard to see where I'd actually put him. It was sort of a relief and sort of not. It was like pulling off an itching scab only to find raw, bloody skin underneath. I gave the bunny a funeral, acting as pallbearer, priest and sexton. I quoted Genesis 3:19 and I said the Lord's Prayer, and a few other things that were just between me and the rabbit and God.

I leaned on the shovel and looked out over the long grass to the stream beyond. The breeze was playing in the long weeds, stirring the trees. Suddenly life was everywhere, in abundance: birds cavorted in the branches, greenery was straining toward the sky everywhere I looked. In the distance I could hear dogs yapping, crows bellowing, crickets and bumblebees buzzing and humming their tabla rhythms. There was one less rabbit in the world; the world would scarcely notice or care. Only I cared.

Sometimes I think this is how we make life bearable, by carrying within us our secret meanings and memories, keeping alive the things that matter to us and to no one else. It's in our nature to wage war against the inevitable decay of nature that is the dark side of God's ever-renewing creation. We fight and win that war by actively bearing witness to life and its small victories. And more than that, we make a statement about our compassion: if we still have room in our hearts to grieve over the loss of a single wild rabbit, then we have ample room for one another.

I loved that rabbit in a small way. I pray that I am never so jaded or so cynical that I will think myself foolish for crying about it.