Hopping down the bunny trail

"And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall..."

The words to this Jefferson Airplane hit from my obviously misspent youth have been running through my head lately, as it seems I've been chasing rabbits.

Oh, not the White Rabbit from the song, written by Grace Slick and released on the Surrealistic Pillow album in 1967. I assure you, there's been no hookah smoke around my head nor any kind of mushrooms involved. (I detest mushrooms, fresh, sauteed or disguised in Campbell's soup.) I guess I've been chasing rabbit trails more than rabbits.

There seems to be no shortage of either.

Literally, there have been few rabbits in my world. In 1975, we took off rabbit hunting on Christmas Day to try out our friend's brand new 7 mm, a Christmas gift from his wife. When it was my turn, Danny and our friends pointed at a winter stripped thicket and said, "See, there's one right down there."

I dutifully pointed the rifle at the thicket, seeing absolutely nothing but thicket and pulled the trigger. They shouted, "You got it!"

I shouted back, "No, I didn't!"

They were sure they had seen the telltale "death leap" and we trudged down to retrieve the hapless creature. We didn't find it. I was relieved. They were mystified.

Other than Patrick's pets years ago, rabbits in my world are relegated to the ones that safely dart across McCook streets as I drive to work and the Trix rabbit. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Trix rabbit. I couldn't believe how selfish those children were. Every Saturday morning, that rabbit tried his hardest to get just a taste of the cereal in the box that bore his picture and every Saturday morning, his disguise would fail and the children would taunt him, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!" Then they'd take a bite, just to spite him. I wanted Mom to buy Trix so I could give some to the rabbit. I was a strange child.

Figuratively, my rabbit trails seem as numerous as the grains of sand on a seashore.

My recent rabbit trails involve, as usual, politics as usual. All of the grandstanding over the mosque/community center, on both sides of the issue, is inescapable. The collective outcry, again for or against, takes me back to when the Brighton (Colorado) School District adopted the middle school concept.

Once adopted, the district implemented a graduation ceremony of sorts for the fifth graders, establishing a clear delineation between elementary and middle school.

I missed Lisa's, but attended Patrick's. Since they both reported for sixth grade at Vikan Middle School after their summer breaks, I assumed that meant they had successfully completed the fifth grade.

I may have been assuming too much. I'm thinking the majority of people still need to graduate fifth grade because fifth-grade behaviors seem to be epidemic these days, in all walks of life and at every age.

In the fifth grade, if you didn't like the way the game was going, and it was your ball, you just picked up your ball and went home. In the fifth grade, if anyone whispered in your ear even the most outlandish statement, it was taken as gospel truth and spread abroad like wildfire. In fifth grade best friends were exchanged more frequently than the average fifth grader changed his underpants. In fifth grade a lie served as well as the truth ... do you see the trend?

Honestly, I think we're trapped in the fifth grade.

Last week's column on Anne Rice and Christianity's falling poll numbers was a record setter in terms of comments, in person, online, and on the telephone. Not all of the comments were complimentary and some included the need for further research. Off I went, on new rabbit trails, the paw prints barely discernible. (It's easier to track them in fresh snow.)

Each rabbit trail seemed to peter out, with no bona fide rabbits sighted along the way. I will continue, as time allows, to pursue the various trails offered. Surely, there is a rabbit out there somewhere.

I think I can identify with poor Elmer Fudd, hunting all of these "wabbits."

Wabbits of information. Not just about Christianity, but other religions and subjects as well. I have a curious nature, and though I've often been warned that "curiosity killed the cat" I quickly counter with, "satisfaction brought him back." Quite frankly, I feel sorry for anybody searching for the truth in this day and age. Jesus warned us that it would be like this with some calling, "Over here. He's over here!" The cacophony is deafening.

All of these rabbit trails are, at best, a distraction, whether we are debating mosques or Christianity. If we're concentrating on those things, we don't have to spend any time exercising any level of introspection.

At worst, they are an exercise in utter futility, with people being tossed to and fro as described in Ephesians 4:14, "blown about by every wind of doctrine."

At the end of the day, however, when all of the rabbit trails have been exhausted, there is still an eternal and everlasting truth to be found.

God is. He is good. He is just. He is able.

God loves. Sinners and saints, on good days or bad days, his love endures forever.

And nowhere is his love more readily apparent than in the person of his Son. And, at the end of the day, it is enough.

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV)

I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does. Let's walk together for awhile and discover Him; together.

Dawn