What's Missing?

September 15, 2026

Beloved:

            We’ve an odd phenomenon around our patch of the neighborhood.  All the squirrels have disappeared, and not a few chipmunks.  No one’s seen any for nearly two weeks.  The prime suspects are two foxes we’ve seen roaming about and napping on various porches.  If they are catching squirrels and chipmunks, they’re leaving no trace – no bones or pelts in anybody’s yards, just speculation for our evening driveway conversations.
            Maybe the squirrels just moved away for some fatter, sweeter acorn harvest.  Still, all of them?  Even this guy, who empties my squirrel-proof birdfeeder every time I fill it.

Or it could be the pair of hawks we’ve seen surveying the ground from the ridge of our backyard neighbor’s roof.  Again, no evidence they’ve caught anything save the absence of the usual sciuridae around these parts.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep blowing the thousands of acorns off my driveway into my yard, should they choose to return.
            I actually only realized it when my neighbor pointed it out a few days ago.  Now I wonder what else I haven’t noticed.  In my yard, or maybe in my heart.  What scarcity or loss has my own busy-ness effected?  What delight or meaning am I missing because of grief, fear or anxiety I am not willing to release?
            Even though they drive me positively crazy sometimes and even though the fox and hawk must eat, I don’t want to live in a world without squirrels, and chipmunks too I suppose.  So I hope they come back; and I promised myself I’d start this day differently – by catching up with myself and paying better attention to my own heart and mind.  Not everything on this ridiculous to-do list next to me is going to get done today, so I need not nurse the feeling that it should.  Instead I’ll neither hurry nor dawdle, as the saying goes, and pay attention along the way to what is going on around and within me.  I pray a gentle day for you as well.

 ~peace & prayers,
pastor annette