Hunny! 40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood – Day 32 – Thursday after 5th Sunday of Lent
To Read:
One day Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh’s front door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them. It was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the Forest was full of gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, “Don’t listen to Rabbit, listen to me.” So he got into a comfortable position for not listening to Rabbit, and from time to time he opened his eyes to say “Ah!” and then closed them again to say “True,” and from time to time Rabbit said, “You see what I mean, Piglet,” very earnestly, and Piglet nodded earnestly to show that he did.
“In fact,” said Rabbit, coming to the end of it at last, “Tigger’s getting so Bouncy nowadays that it’s time we taught him a lesson. Don’t you think so, Piglet?”
Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him it would be a Very Good Idea.
“Just what I feel,” said Rabbit. “What do you say, Pooh?”
Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said “Extremely.”
“Extremely what?” asked Rabbit.
“What you were saying,” said Pooh, “Undoubtably.
Piglet gave Pooh a stiffening sort of nudge, and Pooh, who felt more and more that he was somewhere else, got up slowly and began to look for himself.
“But how shall we do it?” asked Piglet. “What sort of a lesson, Rabbit?”
“That’s the point,” said Rabbit.
The word “lesson” came back to Pooh as one he had heard before somewhere.
“There’s a thing called Twy-stymes,” he said.
“Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me once, but it didn’t.”
“What didn’t?” said Rabbit.
“Didn’t what?” said Piglet.
Pooh shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just didn’t. What are we talking about?”
“Pooh,” said Piglet reproachfully, “haven’t you been listening to what Rabbit was saying?”
“I listened, but I had a small piece of fluff in my ear. Could you say it again, please, Rabbit?” Rabbit never minded saying things again, so he asked where he should begin from; and when Pooh had said from the moment when the fluff got in his ear, and Rabbit had asked when that was, and Pooh had said he didn’t know because he hadn’t heard properly, Piglet settled it all by saying that what they were trying to do was, they were just trying to think of a way to get the bounces out of Tigger, because however much you liked him, you couldn’t deny it, he did bounce.
“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.
“There’s too much of him,” said Rabbit, “that’s what it comes to.”
“Well, I’ve got an idea,” said Rabbit, “and here it is. We take Tigger for a long explore, somewhere where he’s never been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him again, and – mark my words – he’ll be a different Tigger altogether.”
“Why?” said Pooh.
“Because he’ll be a Humble Tigger. Because he’ll be a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That’s why.”
“Will he be glad to see me and Piglet, too?”
“Of course.”
“That’s good,” said Pooh.
“I should hate him to go on being Sad,” said Piglet doubtfully.
“Tiggers never go on being Sad,” explained Rabbit. “They get over it with Astonishing Rapidity. I asked Owl, just to make sure, and he said that that’s what they always get over it with. But if we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad just for five minutes, we shall have done a good deed.”
“Would Christopher Robin think so?” asked Piglet…
(The House at Pooh Corner – In Which Tigger is Unbounced)
From the Scriptures:
The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds – thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3 You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. 4 You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. 6 My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
(Ezekiel 34v1-6)
To Reflect:
“Why?” said Pooh.
“Because he’ll be a Humble Tigger. Because he’ll be a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That’s why.”
Ouch! When I began re-visiting the stories of Christopher Robin and his friends in the 100 Aker Wood I had forgotten how unfriendly they can be sometimes. I expected to meet those who were introverted and could not look up from their own ‘Boggy and sad place’ but knew that that wouldn’t stop them caring. Yes some, such as WOL seem over eager to show off their ‘learning’ and the fact that their spelling is not as ‘wobbly’ as that of others but they still stop to help. And even our beloved Pooh bear, in his perpetual quest for honey, can stretch his relationships with the others but wins everyone over in the end. But Rabbit! How can it be that, instead of sitting down and talking things through with Tigger he hatches a plan to teach him a lesson? After all can any good come from intentionally making someone, ‘Humble, sad, melancholy, small and sorry’? This is not a lesson in learning humility but one in humiliation…
Pooh and Piglet seem to fall in with the plot by accident. However Piglet’s concerns suggest that he should have perhaps tried to be a little braver and walked away from the idea taking Pooh with him. But sadly this is what we see across our lives and across the world. Rabbit takes the role of the playground bully and the others tag along behind. Because Rabbit is upset Tigger must be punished and ‘unbounced’ and he bullies Pooh and Piglet into agreeing with him. This has shades of the de-bagging that used to happen at my boarding school by those who wielded power amongst my classmates. My body has borne those bruises, and though I have found healing, my heart remains scarred…
Left unfettered these bullies become rabble rousers who lead hooligans into fights, political groups into prejudice, and nations into wars against anyone who is different from them. And the plea of their followers when justice finally catches up with them is too often, ‘We were only following orders,’ or ‘they deserved it.’ As if anyone deserves to be lynched, gassed, shot, or driven to suicide….
It is very sad when, in our church fellowships, we allow our inner rabbit to run wild. Instead of turning cheeks we slap each other in the face, having enough of our own we mirror King David and steal the cherished possessions of others, and we become used to others carrying our burdens as well as their own. Yes, we may have been ‘bounced’ a little but this is not a godly response. Yes, the other person may not do everything the way we like it but no one learns by being humiliated.
Our Beloved gives us a different pattern of living together. His early disciples call us to bear with one another and make forgiveness our first response to being ‘Bounced’. And more than that when the bouncing is intentional, when we are being deliberately taken advantage of this must become our plan of action;
…if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.
(Matthew 5v39-41)
It is in this way we fulfil the law of love.
To Pray:
But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace.
Give me humility in which alone is rest,
and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens.
(Thomas Merton)
To Do:
- The next time you are ‘Bounced’ by a fellow follower of the Way do a small kindness for them.
- Use this prayer each day until Easter Day:
Today Lord, make me humble,
And if you can’t humiliate me.
Please Note: These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Twitter as @SuffolkVicar, and on my public Facebook page Rev Andrew Dotchin
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Acknowledgements:
Text from ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ by A.A. Milne copyright © The Trustees of the Pooh Properties.
Line illustrations copyright © The Estate of E.H. Shepard.
Colouring of the illustrations copyright © 1970 and 1973 The Estate of E.H. Shepard and HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Prayers are from ‘The Little Book of Prayers’ edited by David Schiller copyright © David Schiller 1996: Workman Publications.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
These Reflections, ‘Hunny! 40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood’ are copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2024
Suffolk Vicar 