What Kind of Bunny?

Last Friday (3/18), I took my kids to see Zootopia.

It was a little intense for them, but on the whole they liked it. It was the three-year-old's first movie. If I had known that it was quite that dark, I probably wouldn't have taken her, but she sat in my lap the whole time and thought it was pretty neat. 

The theme of the movie, much touted elsewhere, is good enough for the very heavy-handed Disney presentation. The animals in Zootopia have all learned to get along. The movie deals with stereotyping and what happens to individuals when we stereotype groups. Granted, foxes, elephants, sheep, and bunnies have far less biologically in common than do all people, so should we need an animal film to show us how to get along? 

Nevertheless, as I watched the movie, I was increasingly agitated. There was obviously a lot of biological and anatomical research that went into this movie. While there were some animals that appeared slightly unusually shaped for their species (see: Clawhauser, the slightly chubby cheetah), most were drawn with some (cartoonish) accuracy. The polar bears did not have waists, the lion had a broad chest and narrow hips, the moles looked like moles, and even the rockstar, Gazelle, looked reasonably like a, well, rockstar gazelle. 

There was one glaring exception. The main character, Judy Hopps, is a bunny. She comes from a carrot-farming family of bunnies with 200+ children. She wants to be a police officer from the time she was little. Her mother and father, Bonnie and Stu Hopps, look like this:

But Judy, our heroine, our poster girl, the hope for every merchandiser under the sun who wants to break Elsa's hold on little girls... Judy looks like this: 

In a phrase I thought I'd never type, I encourage you to check out the figure on that bunny. Why does a bunny have a nipped-in waist and a defined bosom? Holding a rabbit to sex it got my dad scratched many times. If female rabbits looked like, we could have saved a lot of iodine. Additionally, most little girls don't grow up looking like this. It should not be amazing to me that Disney could not resist princess-ifying Officer Hopps, but I am still surprised. Why should she look like a realistic rabbit, when she can look like an unrealistic standard of womanhood? 

Judy works hard for what she wants. She learns important lessons about friendship, stick-to-it-tiveness, and forgiveness. However, alongside those important lessons, children are imbibing, once again, an unrealistic and unhelpful body standard for women. (We never see Judy doing her time in the gym to maintain this figure.)

When it comes to bunnies and bunny merchandise, we'll stick to Ruby. We might learn a healthy dose of bossiness leadership skills and we'll learn that bunnies that walk on two feet look like this:

There is Love (Litany for Holy Trinity)

At the beginning of time, there was chaos and darkness- disordered nothingness

But that harsh environment, in the sharp edges of confusion and potential,

There was Love.

God’s own self existed- Truth does not exist in a vacuum.

There was a relationship within God that is beyond our imagination.

There was Love.

The Word of Life and the Shaping Spirit worked out the soil, the water, the plants, the animals.

The Eternal Creative birthed people for the sake of creation.

There was Love.

In the calling to co-create through farming, ranching, planting, cultivating, parenting,

Friending, building, dreaming, cooperating, and expanding,

There was Love.

Together, God’s own self revealed kin-dom in one way and then another.

Despite rebellion and rejection, brokenness and stubbornness, in the plan of Three in One

There was Love.

Oil and flour sustained. Wellsprings flowed in the desert. Prophets heard whispers.

Women dreamed and did not abandon hope. The tilling of the soil continued through generations.

There was Love.

God took on flesh. A necessary separation of powers,

deepening the relationship between the One in Three.

There was Love.

Healing. Teaching. Men. Women. Children. Water. Wind.

Words in the dirt. Voice in the air. Dove descending. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness.

There was Love.

Darkness. Death. Deep grief in the Eternal. Curtain torn in two.

Hush. Hush. Hush. There is nothing but patience. They wait. God waits. Earth sighs.

There was Love.

Bright! Bright! Up. Up. UP! Life reigns. There is no division. Of the same substance,

The same truth, the same eternal being. The omnipotent resurrection is the revelation of eternity.

There was Love.

Mystery in water. Mystery in bread. Mystery in the fruit of the vines.

Community. Communion. Consolation. Confusion. Correction. Capability. Creativity.

There was Love.

There is no explaining what was, is, and ever shall be.

There is trust. There is hope. There is God: Holy Parent, Holy Son, Holy Spirit.

There is Love.

Those Who Save Us

It's Veteran's Day. Or Veterans' Day. Or Remembrance Day, for some.

My husband is a veteran. So's my brother. My grandfathers were and my great-uncles.




There was an article in Wired last month about content moderation in social media feeds. Adrian Chen, the author, wrote about teams of Filipino men and women who are hired by companies who contract with Facebook, Twitter, or other internet works to monitor what is posted. They are paid to sit and delete pictures of genitalia, graphic violence, abuse, animal cruelty, threatening images, and anything thing that interrupts the flow of happy babies, food pics, and Buzzfeed quizzes.

Chen writes:

While a large amount of content moderation takes place overseas, much is still done in the US, often by young college graduates like Swearingen was. Many companies employ a two-tiered moderation system, where the most basic moderation is outsourced abroad while more complex screening, which requires greater cultural familiarity, is done domestically. US-based moderators are much better compensated than their overseas counterparts: A brand-new American moderator for a large tech company in the US can make more in an hour than a veteran Filipino moderator makes in a day. But then a career in the outsourcing industry is something many young Filipinos aspire to, whereas American moderators often fall into the job as a last resort, and burnout is common.

Apparently being well paid for this work in the U.S. means in the neighborhood of $20/hr. So there are people in the world who are working for $20-25/day to absorb the most horrific images of what the human psyche is will to capture in pictures and on film. Burnout is common. Chen speaks with people who quit so they won't become desensitized to the horror, because they can't handle it anymore, because they are becoming so distrustful of their fellow human beings that they are unable to leave the house or find someone to watch their children.

Is $20/day enough for work that may take this kind of toll?


Similarly, there are people we pay to intercede for us- in places we don't want to go, in situations we can't imagine, in circumstances beyond their control. We ask them to make split second decisions about the actions of men, women, and children. We expect them to kill and remain unaffected, to manipulate and yet continue to trust, to obey and still be willing to point out injustice. It's difficult, difficult work that people volunteer for and that turns out to be more than they may have expected.

No one's forced to join the military. No one is forced to become a content moderator.

Sometimes I think that's what we tell ourselves when we don't want to admit that someone else is putting up with a lot to make our lives easier, better, cleaner, safer.... far from the grit and horror that are possible in the world.

If we described what these people did, what they saw, what they would endure... how would we decide what to pay them? What they deserved after their work? How to honor them? How to help them heal? How to respect them?


Before you automatically thank a veteran for his or her service today, remember their work is often content moderation- seeing what's bad and preventing it from getting worse. What's that truly worth to us?

God is like...

I received this prompt for prayer writing in my email today from Rachel Hackenberg at faithandwater.com: 

A frequent scriptural image used to identify God's faithfulness is rock. "For who is God except the LORD? And who is a rock besides our God?" (Psalm 18:31) I thought that I might write a prayer today using new images for God's faithfulness . . . but to my surprise, I'm stumped! What is more constant than a rock?! My cell phone, which is constantly by my side? It will glitch and die just before its two-year contract expires. The sun, rising every morning? Its lifespan is only as long as the day. The river, with its endless run toward the ocean? Its paths are ever-shifting and eroding, and its ecosystem varies depending upon pollution, salinity, droughts & floods.
So I pose the challenge to you for your creativity in prayer: what image of faithfulness might you use to describe God?

 I wrote this prayer, which doesn't exactly capture the idea of faithfulness, but does consider some different similes for God (cross-posted at revgalblogpals.org).

“For who is God except the LORD? And who is a rock besides our God?” (Psalm 18:31)

God, you are like water- present in all living things, surrounding us at birth, above us, below us, besides, within.

Holy Parent, you are like the scent of cinnamon and vanilla- comforting, pervasive, overwhelming, mouth-watering, magnetic.

Spirit of Hope, you are like calculus- mysterious, enigmatic, amazing when understood, an explanation for how things work, essential, but just beyond my grasp.

Jesus, you are my brother- teaching, teasing, wrestling, hide-and-seek, companion of long nights, fellow traveler, of the same stuff as me and yet even more. Even when I don’t speak to you, I cannot undo that I am your family.

Amen.

What are your images for God and for God's faithfulness?