Eye on the Sparrow

I have always had a hard time with death of little things: the myriad upon myriad wee kittens; "presents" our cats brought us that weren't quite dead; birds that had blown out of their nest in a storm, too small to have feathers; wee bunnies; more myriad litters of rodents than one can count. I tried to save *every*single*one. and you know what? I never succeeded. Ever. Not even once. And I have never, ever stopped trying, and I have never, ever stopped being unbelievably heart-broken. Being on a farm of any size, or being at all involved with the animal world, leads you into this contact, all the time. It's why farmers (REAL farmers--NOT commercial &$%@*!), are so sane: because they have to deal with death, all the time.
I follow the (totally awesome) blog Food Renegade, where she recently posted Why I'm Not a Vegan. Let me tell you, it is truly timely . . . we just lost two kittens, that i fought so hard to save. and then, yesterday, ryan found a bird's nest with wee wee babies in it, when he took down an old army helmet hanging in a shed where a mama bird had nested . . . today, we realized the inevitable had happened: the mother had abandoned it when her nest was disturbed and handled by "predators" (you really cannot imagine anyone less predatory than my husband, in every possible sense of the word). so we buried the poor we babes in our garden. but it doesn't diminish the tremendous sense of sorrow.
Because i am, at heart, in some ways, a complete and utter hippie, i am doing my best to hold out for the name "Sparrow" if we ever have a daughter. NO, not after Captain Jack, and not after whatever hollywood whoever-face named their son that (not a good boy name, folks). but after that beautiful passage in Matthew, regarding the birds of the air, not one of whose death goes unnoticed; after the lovely, lovely song: "His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me." after a line in Rilla of Ingleside (which, for the record, is the best of the Anne books) that was more or less revelatory to me: "You forget . . . that an infinite power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as much importance as a mastodon." Because God, the sort of God as understood by the mystics and wonderers and saints and beauty-seekers, must care for everything or nothing. a God that cares for nothing, or even only some things, surely is not a God worth serving. But a God that cares for everything, whose heart weeps over the death of small birds, as much as the self-destruction of an empire, who cares for every single thing He has created . . . surely this is a God worth serving, if only we will believe in His sorrow for sin and lay the blame at the right door: at the poor choices of humanity, NOT at His respect of our free will.
so now that i've vented, and tried to untie this knot in my stomach at the death of some featherless, flightless creatures, i shall leave you. and go plant my garden, where life will spring forth from death.

(p.s. for the record, my chances of having a daughter are somewhat slim; my chances of having one named Sparrow?  . . . almost none.)