ABC News · https://abcnews.com/GMA/Living/jimothy-raccoon-captures-internets-heart/story?id=135020936
A hunchbacked raccoon earned a councilmember's proclamation for being lovable precisely because he's imperfect. Scripture says the body owes its weakest parts the greater honor.
Those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary… God composed the body together, giving more abundant honor to the inferior part.
1 Corinthians 12:22-24
In late July 2026, Seattle did something a serious city is not supposed to do. It fell for a raccoon.
His name is Jimothy. His back is rounded and hunched, likely short spine syndrome, and that crooked silhouette is the whole reason the internet, and then the city, decided he was theirs. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck announced a proclamation in his honor and put the reason plainly: "You don't have to be perfect to be loved."
She is right, and the line is carrying more than a raccoon. Paul once spent a paragraph on exactly this, insisting that the parts of a body we quietly rank as weaker, less presentable, easy to skip, are the ones dressed in the greater honor. The hunched back was the whole appeal.
Which is easy when the subject has a tail.
It gets harder when the subject has a name and a phone number. We will crown a crooked raccoon by acclamation and still run a quiet audit on the difficult coworker, the struggling neighbor, the unfinished draft of ourselves that never quite clears the bar. The grace we lavish on the animal, we tend to ration with each other.
1 Corinthians 1:27-2827but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong;28and God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are:
Paul says God does it on purpose, reaching past the strong and the impressive for the low and the discarded, the things the world has already filed under nothing. The councilmember was quoting a very old habit without knowing it.
Jimothy will never know he has a proclamation. He is busy living his good little life at a careful distance, exactly as the councilmember hoped. The people beside us are not raccoons. They would feel the honor, or its absence.
That is the harder proclamation, and no council will sign it for us.