Rescue

I haven't saved anyone from physical peril lately, unlike our host. What I have been, is involved in a local crisis with the animal shelter. To make a long story short, I was afraid we'd turned some kind of awful corner and would have to abandon our long-standing program that more or less prevented any need to kill animals to make space. I'm now thinking we hit more of a temporary blip and just need to scramble to take some emergency Dunkirk-like action to get the sudden population pressure off the shelter, and that we'll be able to get back on an even keel and still avoid killing animals for space.

More about that later. What I want to say today is that I come unspooled in the face of dogs under threat. Our new County Judge named a committee to step in and made me the chair. I'm scrambling and finding some useful concrete immediate things to do to get a grip on the problem. My committee has excellent members. There's all kinds of good news.

In the middle of all this, I had a shattering experience at my church on Sunday, making an impassioned plea for help that I felt fell on deaf ears. I was in tears in front of the lot of them, and I felt they ghosted me. Again, long story, there's more to it, I get that it wasn't all it seemed, and we'll deal with it.

No, here's the real point. I have a friend at church between whom and myself a terrible rift opened up years ago over how she had put her dogs in danger. I’ve been icy ever since, with my conscience upbraiding me. Yesterday, alone among all my co-parishioners, she showed up in Commissioners Court to support me and the dogs. I realized I had to make this right by finding her and confessing my fault in my part of the rift. Today she asked my forgiveness before I could even speak first. We buried the hatchet. It’s moments like that that make life worth living. (And on top of that, we've savings some dogs.)

I think God sees that there are things in me that can't be helped until other things are broken down. He puts me in a crisis where I have to crack open and become fully human, because I can't coast by in a state of cool control. If it takes dogs in peril, He'll put me in charge of saving some dogs in peril. Because it's not only dogs to whom I owe a duty of love, it's also my fellow human beings, especially the ones I haven't managed to forgive. I'm so solitary; I'm barely in contact with human beings at all most of the time. But that's not what I was put on Earth for.