the Gospel According to Beatrix Potter

So.  My last post, two years ago, was the Gospel According to Jon Stewart.  This will be the Gospel According to Beatrix Potter.  I actually believe that the Potter's books contain most if not all of Jesus' principles for living.  I'd like to start with repentance, which I've been thinking about a lot lately, having a great need for it, daily and continually. 
  One of my favorite Potter characters is Simpkin the cat from "The Tailor of Gloucester."   This is a cat who, focusing only on his own needs, hides away a skein of silk that the poor, ill Tailor needs to finish a fancy waistcoat. 
  But then something happens.  Simpkin comes upon some good little mice--mice he had, in fact, hoped to have for his dinner--who are actually doing the sewing for the Tailor so that he will not miss his deadline.  And here's the part I like: " . .. and he [Simpkin] felt quite ashamed of his badness compared with those good little mice!"  The newly "repentant Simpkin" returns the skein to the Tailor, who finishes the coat in time, and all is well.
  What I like is the quiet, inward nature of Simpkin's repentance.  No one scolds him: no one says "You give back that skein, you bad cat!"  No--it is the goodness of the mice that brings him up short.  That is the way repentance really is.   It is not provoked by a preacher shouting "Repent!"  Bluster doesn't bring it on.   It is the quiet soul-searching, often triggered by witnessing some simple act of goodness, that turns me around. 
  One of the things that makes Simpkin's repentance a little easier is his self-image, or lack thereof.  Simpkin is not trying to be good.  He has no lofty sense of himself as a Good Christian, or even a Good Cat.  He's just living his life, trying to stay warm and catch mice.  What makes repentance agonizing is when we want to cling to some glorified self-image. 
  This is why repentance is harder on poor Peter in the Bible.  "No, not I, Lord!"  he says.  "I'll never betray you!"  Peter, like me, has an image of himself as a Good Person, a loyal friend to Jesus.  And the tears are bitter indeed when he is wordlessly and silently confronted with his own cowardice.  Simpkin cries not at all.  I wish I were more like him.