The Price of Ignorance is Cruelty: Losing Emmy

Is anyone still blogging? It seems time again. With the unintelligibility of the world today, the voluntary ignorance, the fools fueling not only their own demise, but all of creation’s, yes, it seems time. Oh, how jealous is evil of fragility and beauty? How jealous is death of life? The work of suffering is unintelligible to those set on believing in themselves. Yes, you drove fast, sir.  You shot your wad all over the fields.  She had dragged herself diagonally toward her house, our house, and away from the center of the road.  It probably took her hours. And three more times you drive by.  It sounded like you were going 90-100 kph.  I saw your dirty car. You left her there in the thunderstorm. How do you like your migrant work?  “Your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?” 

Yes, I have something to say.  I have been quiet now for a long tine. But I have something to say, to you, and your ugly, cruel, progressive world. Your vanity is ignorance and cruelty. You are not virtuous. You are not beautiful.  You don’t even want to be. You don’t even know enough anymore to want to be. You are your dirty, loud, ugly, speeding, cackling car, and you are all of the death, suffering, and loss you leave behind. 

The Return

Early is the evening, 
Reluctant the dawn;
Once there was summer;
Sudden it was gone.
It fell like a leaf,
Whirled downstream.
Was there ever summer,
Or only a dream?
Was ever a world
That was not November?
Once there was summer,
And this I remember,

Cornflowers and daisies,
Buttercups and clover,
Black-eyed Susans and Queen-Anne's lace,
A wide green meadow,
And bees booming over,
And a little laughing girl with the wind in her face.

Strident are the voices
And hard lights shine;
Feral are the faces;
Is one of them mine?
Something is lost now,
Tarnished the gleam;
Was there ever nobleness,
Or only a dream?
Yes, and it lingers,
Lost not yet;
Something remains
Till this I forget

Cornflowers and clover,
Buttercups and daisies,
Black-eyed Susans under blue and white skies
And the grass waist high
Where the red cow grazes,
And a little laughing girl with faith in her eyes.

Ogden Nash

                                                amnoß…behold the lamb of God. 

Heartbreak: Losing Bashful, So Alive in My Dreams

 

In dreams, my memories ramble,

out where my heart cannot go,

back to the love and the laughter.

Lord, what a far, distant show.

--Hoyt Axton



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I dream of the sky.

-- Hoyt Axton

 

 

 

 

 

What It Takes to Cry

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”  

―  Hans Christian Anderson

Χαθικε - Lost, Missing

It's spring and the fields are full of life.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     But this little guy is missing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
I have noticed that sometimes the tears don't come until after I tell somebody.  That happened today. I said, "One of my cats is missing."  And the tears came.  What was, over the weekend, one after another sudden attack of ungodly pain, assaults on my heart I tried desperately to run from, distract myself from, bargain with God over, were transfigured into water, and came flowing out of me in tears, only in the presence of another human being, and only after I said the words:                                                                                                                                                                                                

"One of my cats is missing."

It's something I don't understand.  

“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ”  

― Colette

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

― William Wordsworth

#160

Big Boy.  YUGE.  Came home a little lighter yesterday.  He's the 160th cat I have altered.

Once at the vet, he escaped from the trap in the back room, and my vet had a heck of a time finding him and getting him back in.  He said he was one of the cleverest cats he's ever seen. 

Thanks to Becca.

The Least of These

For I was hungry and you gave me food. Matthew 25:35

A lot of people have tried to contact me asking me how I am, where I have gone, etc., etc.  I have struggled to answer them, or postponed answering them, because I have been unable to put my feelings into words, or to explain myself to anyone.  I tried with someone here, someone also in animal rescue, but she had no idea what I was trying to say.  

She is not a believer, and I don't know many people here doing what I do who are.  I think you might have to be to even want to understand.  For the others, they shrink back in horror, or they try to lead me down a road that is not for me, giving me a pep talk. I don't want to be fixed in that sense, not if God is speaking to me through my experiences.

I don't even like to use those words anymore after what I have learned -after doing this for 6-7 years now - "animal rescue".  It makes me sound like I think I am a hero, and I don't.  I have learned unequivocally, I am not. Please don't say that.  Meet me where I am.

But I recently I heard a homily, a podcast, which put into words for me what I have been going through, and I would like to share it here, to speak for me.  For those who I haven't spoken to, I will be in touch as soon as I am able.  I have been facing enormous physical and mental exhaustion, mostly mental - probably mostly spiritual.  It was a blessing to me to have what I suspected confirmed by a member of my faith.

The notion that perhaps I am not on the wrong track, and this is indeed the way it is supposed to be, gives me hope in the path I have been taking, and the future.  But it will require to regroup, re-evaluate my goals, and re-prioritize them.

Here is the link to the podcast,  for those who might be interested.  I think the truth of it is profound:

The Least of These

Funny, when I see the quote at the top of this post from Matthew is the first quote I chose for my blog, over in the sidebar, when I started this work, it makes all the more sense to me.

I have learned instead I am the one who needs rescuing, and is being rescued by God, and hopefully will continue to be, to learn of my own spiritual poverty, and that this is the meaning of God asking us to do charity, to learn this awakening, sobering truth.

But I still can't explain it as good as he did.

Heartbreak: Good Runs, Changing Seasons, and Losing Baba

For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

-- Psalm 109:22

 

Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.

-- St. Silouan the Athonite

 

 

I was there when she was born, underneath my couch. I heard her first tiny mews. 

 

I named her Bubbles, but I always called her Baba.  And I said it like, "Bah-Bah" - like a sheep, or as my Cypriot neighbour would say, "like a ship."  She knew her name well.  She would prance in place like a kewpie doll and wink when I said it.

 

One day, after I moved her, her mother, and her siblings to my bedroom from under the sofa, when she and her siblings were still tiny, she got very ill suddenly.  It was the middle of the night.  She jumped off the bed and fell over.  She couldn't keep her balance.  She would try to stand up and just fall over. 

This was soon after Nick and I split.  I was on my own.  I had a new vet.  He was a young guy from Greece.  It wasn't his clinic, but the owner was never there.  It was a small clinic, not too busy, and he let me call him at odd hours.  I will never forget how he coached me on the phone. 

He told me what medicines to give her.  I sat with the door closed in the bathroom on the toilet seat holding her, talking to her.  I gave her little bits of water, and of vitamin gel.  I put her back in the bedroom in a closed carrier, and let her rest, so she wouldn't hurt herself.

 

 

I drew Baba and her siblings nursing their mom in my bedroom  It's one of my favourite drawings.

 

I don't remember much more, just that she got better.  I credit my vet, and my energy that morning. And of course, God.  But then God is always there, we are just usually distracted.  It's hard to focus on God.  It takes an enormous amount of energy. 

That was about three years ago.  Then last year she disappeared from the garden.  It was the end of summer, beginning of fall.  She was gone days, more than a week I think, about 8 days.  I had started the downhill slope to comfort myself, but with caveats.  I knew I had seen strange things, like cats show up, when I still had the biggest hope, but only the tiniest faith.

My Aunt with kittens when she came to visit.  Baba on the far left. 

And, sure enough, one evening after dark, I saw a strange figure approaching.  Walking funny.  Tripping a little and unsteady.  She got closer and closer across the garden, and when she had reached the little bit of light coming off the front porch, in the grass where I stood, I saw that it was her.  I noticed she looked confused, disoriented.  I grabbed her and put her straight away in a standing enclosure.  Not so much because I knew something was wrong, but because I wanted to keep her with me.  Sort of like a dog grabs a bone that has strayed, and puts it in bed with him.

I put her some good food and water.  I don't remember if she ate.  But I do remember she was so happy to be in the enclosure.  I wondered why.  I put an open carrier in there with a blanket for her to make her den, and a litter box.  I wrapped up in the garden and went inside.  She was alive.  She was home.  She was with me.  That's all I needed to know.  How do you thank God properly at a time like that? 

 

 

The next morning I was tending to her when I caught a glimpse of something very red on the inside of her leg.  I tried to investigate.  She wouldn't let me.  But after a time just watching her do her normal things, I saw there was no skin on the inside of her leg.  Just the raw meat of her muscles and tendons.  They weren't torn.  It was a very clean display. 

My young vet had moved back to Greece by then, and I never found anyone again willing to help me at all hours.  I researched myself as much as I could, and because Zooty had recently been bitten by a snake, and Bonnie had disappeared just before that, the next day I concluded it was a snake bite.  Because I had recently cared for another cat, Astro, who lost the skin on his leg, I knew what to do.  It was too late for an anti-venom, but not too late for antibiotics. So she stayed in the enclosure until she healed, a long time, and then I brought her inside.  I think she would have been happy forever inside the enclosure.

Baba and siblings in my bedroom when they were wee

She wasn't that happy inside the house.  Too many cats.  She felt vulnerable.  But I kept her in for months anyway, until about 2 months ago. One day I let her out.  I wish I hadn't.   

This morning before the sun rose I was on my way to the feeding stations, and I saw  what looked like a cat's body in the dirt road in front of my neighbor's house.  I know my cats go there and eat sometimes.  And theirs come to my house to eat. I stopped my car and got out.  At first I thought it was one of the torties, but I knew they didn't go down there.  As I got closer I saw the torby coloring, and the shape of the feet, and her very distinctive head shape.  I swallowed hard.  I moved her off the road and put her the grass beside.  I would pick her up on the way home.

 

 

I took these pictures of her early one morning in the garden last week.  They are the last pictures I took of her. 

 

 

 

 

I spotted the yellow wildflowers early this year, before it warmed up. There were difficulties the end of last summer, a whole string of them, but since then, until now, I cannot complain.  I had a good run. 

 

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

-- Henry James 

 

 

 

 

I used to think of romance when I heard this song, now I think of the Holy Spirit, and how to keep Him with me.

 

 

A Very Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Mark 16:14-15

 

Wow this really is belated.  But I want to post something I love.  I love Christmas so much.  I will be listening to Christmas carols for at least another month. 

 

I love this award winning Russian animation of the Nativity so much, I am going to post it permanently in the side bar.  It's one of my favourite things. It has so many wonderful creatures in it: a lion, rabbits, birds, an ox, a donkey, all an essential part of the Nativity story.  In Orthodoxy we don't say Merry Christmas, we say, "Christ is born!  Glorify him!"

 

Even the humble creatures of the sea glorify Him in this version of events, as it should be. Enjoy. 

 

 

 

I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things,...1 Timothy 6:13