Hedgehogs are Huggable!

Hedgehogs make excellent pets. They’re easy to care for, don’t take up much space, are super cute and always make for a good story. 

For all the diversity in hedgehog things available to the general public, there seem to be only a handful of hedgehog plotlines in children’s books. They tend to go like this:

Hedgehogs are not huggable – just look at those spikes! No one wants to hug this hedgehog, and she’s really sad about it. There are varied solutions: tuck the hedgehog into something soft to muffle the sting of the spikes; pair her up with a more durable critter — say, an armadillo or a turtle. The outcome is always cute. But the basic premise is the same: Just look at that spiky creature; no one wants to get near it.

Here’s the problem: Hedgehogs are entirely huggable. We used to cuddle with ours all the time. It’s really not that hard or novel. But people see nothing beyond those prickly quills and assume the worst.

We all can be a bit prickly at times. Grumpy, scared, angry. Those are the times, in fact, when hedgehogs ball up, quills out – and you shouldn’t touch them. But that isn’t their permanent state; just be patient and they’ll unwind. Too often, I think, we see nothing but the prickly quills on the people around us: family, friends, colleagues, strangers. We catch them in stressful moments and freeze them that way in our minds. We assume they’re always prickly – and we shouldn’t get too close.

Perhaps we see ourselves that way: prickly, unforgiveable, better left alone.

Consider how God sees each of us, our full selves. Whole human beings. Prickly, sure, but so much more. God sees us beyond a single moment; God is patient in God’s desire to accompany us through life’s challenges and joys and moments of frustration. God waits for the hedgehog to unwind, to lower her quills.

God knows how huggable a hedgehog can be.

Adapted from a reflection by Eric Clayton, posted on www.jesuits.org

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