Becoming a Real Rabbit

There are a few books from my childhood that abide within me. Books like THe Phantom Tollbooth, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, A Wrinkle in Time, and A swiftly Tilting Planet all stuck with me and I have revisited them at times. A smaller book that was a birthday present for my fifth birthday is sitting on my bookshelves. That book is The Velveteen Rabbit. This is a book about the way that love can make things real. The Velveteen Rabbit is a stuffed toy within a nursery who comes to discover what being real means.

The story follows the interaction of the Rabbit with other toys and the way it comes to love in return. The story and prose is beautiful and touching. One of my favorite passages is the one in which the rabbit begins to have an awareness of what real means as a toy that has been in the nursery the longest explains how one becomes real and what it means to be real.

"The Skin Horse had lived in the nursery longer than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

‘What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'

‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, you, not just to play with, but REALLY loves then you become Real.'

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’" (Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit)

As the story continues the boy in the nursery becomes very sick with scarlet fever. The Velveteen Rabbit becomes his constant companion. The description of the rabbit at this point is of an older toy whose appearance has become somewhat shabby, but the rabbit has learned that the love given makes him real. In a poignant moment, the rabbit moves close to the boy’s ear as he is suffering with a high fever and whispers all of the wonderful things they can do together when the boy gets well. Soon, the boy does get better. The rabbit hears of a planned trip to the beach for further healing and gets excited.

But as the rabbit begins thinking of all the wonderful things they will do, the doctor orders all of the bedsheets and stuffed toys to be burned because of the presence of scarlet fever. The rabbit is despondent as it is placed in a bag to be burned. Outside and in the bag, the rabbit begins to wonder what the point of being real is when destruction is imminent. The rabbit sheds a very real tear that falls upon the ground sprouting into a fairy who takes the rabbit into the woods telling him it will help to make him real. The rabbit protests mentioning that he is already real, but the fairy explains the possible transformation from being a real toy to being a real rabbit. But, the fairy warns the rabbit that once one becomes real, there is no going back.

The rabbit does become real and learns how to be a rabbit. But the love of one who originally made him real calls to him and he goes back to look on that boy. The book ends with a beautiful scene of almost recognition and the beauty of transformation.

"Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so \that the Boy thought to himself:

‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real." (Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit)

I was reminded of the transformative power of love as I recalled reading the passage of the skin horse last year for our Ash Wednesday service. I found the passage in one of my prayer books. Continuing in the story, we see a completion of becoming real. I cannot help thinking of how God loves us into being real. Through the work of salvation and sanctification, Wesleyan-Holiness folk believe that God makes us true humans, or real humans. in our reconciliation with God, we become able to fulfill our purpose as human beings rather than not quite real. The beauty of the Gospel has nothing to do with God saving us from God, but God loving us into reconciliation. That love enables us to transform from shabbiness into beauty.