One spring afternoon, we teachers and families gathered in our school backyard for Community Day. Teams dispersed to plant flowers, build shelves for loose parts, haul in woodchips, and so on.
While supervising our team at the sandpit, something caught my eye. Maybe they're battery-powered rubber toys, or stumpy slugs who lost their way, I thought to myself. I stooped down to inspect the three enigmas--each the size of my thumb--squirming in the sand. In a matter of seconds, I went from scared stiff to protector mode. They weren't toys nor slugs, but baby mice. In the process of raking the sandpit, we'd disturbed a mouse nest.
Teaching children outdoors at a nature-inspired school required me to carry out duties that'd be unheard of in traditional elementary schools. Whatever the weather, we were amongst the elements doing literacy or math work. Our motto? There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear. Another duty was to keep my cool as I removed ticks from my students. Graduate school didn't prepare me for any of these.
Much less how to rescue newborn mice.
But counter to my fight-or-flight response in the presence of this "threat", I cradled fragility in the flesh. Blind, bare, and deaf.
Newborn mice develop ears between five to seven days and their eyes open between 10 to 14 days. The mice in my hands were barely five days old. I placed them at a safe distance away from the sun and rakes where they could easily be retrieved by their mother.
What if we envisioned the newborn mice as different characters? The abused adolescent, the able marked as disabled, the refugee denied refuge. Surely there are more characters, but let each of us reflect on this: Who is the fragile in the flesh that threatens my convenience?
Xavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist says, "There is a new touch, a new kindness, a new softness, a new way of living which is completely introduced by the fact that you put the weakest in the center of the community. And they become the ones who are going to regulate the life of the society."
To those of you who are realigning your pace to the "least of these", thank you for living out that which is at the heart of an enduring community. To those who have begun asking the question, it is just the beginning of the richness of joy in discovering the suffering of others.
