Omer 2025 Day 1

 Omer Intro | Day 2

Day 1: The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd
Chesed in Chesed, Loving-kindness in Loving-kindness

I realized when I was preparing this year's theme that this first week is really all about relationships. You'll see throughout this week that loving-kindness plays out in each book through the relationships of the characters.

I chose this particular book to kick us off because the relationship piece works on two levels - both within the book and in my reading of it with my kids. My kids loved this book when they were little and I loved it too. I can't say that about every book they wanted to read on repeat, but this one was always a joy to read to them. 

The entire book is a conversation between a bunny and his mother. Seemingly out of the blue, the bunny announces that he is going to run away, and he and the mother take an imaginative journey through all the ways he could run away and all the ways that she could find him. If he becomes a rock on a mountain, she would be a mountain climber. If he becomes a bird, she would be the tree he comes home to. In the end, finding no scenario in which his mother will not provide a loving home for him, he gives up the idea and decides to stay right where he is. There was an opportunity for his mother to counter his outlandish plans with a dose of reality, telling him he can't turn into a rock or a bird or a boat, or arguing that he has everything he needs at home already. But his mother meets his need for creativity and adventure with imagination and love.