Softening Stones

While checking out at my local grocery on Saturday, my cashier became engrossed with a woman on line behind me, holding something tucked securely beneath her coat.  As a few others gathered near, we were treated to the sight of a gorgeous puppy, very much like the dark one in this photo.  Another employee who was now cradling this sweet baby explained that her mother had been driving behind a fast-moving vehicle, when this puppy and one other were tossed through an open window landing hard on the side of the road.  Astonished, she quickly stopped her vehicle and was able to rescue them.  The sweet puppy that I imagine may have looked like the lighter one in the photo above, did not survive.  The dark angel, blinking his wise blue eyes at us, under fluorescent lights in a check-out line on a Saturday night, was full of the miracle of life, coursing through his tiny body. 

As I gathered my packages I was filling with joy at the story's happy ending for this little guy, and  I could feel a familiar sense of outrage welling up inside me about the evil and cruel end to his litter-mate's short life.  As I walked to my car, placed my bags inside and fell into the driver's seat, my story was shaping, as was the stone in my heart.  Feeling this stone growing cold and hard within, awoke me with a hard shudder.  I sat quietly, feeling calmer as a slow melting began, the ink on my invented and cherished story-line, slowly fading on the page of my mind.  As my heart opened wider, I considered another story.  Whose hands were those, who executed such a hard fate to such innocent babes?  What careless, cruel, and violent tossing aside might this innocent babe have felt from the hands of another, before?  And they, from another before?  And they, before them?  Innocent children, innocent puppies, innocence lives, born and abused, again and again.  How do we separate the guilty from the innocent, the perpetrators from the victims?  How do we know?

I trust that you, the reader are more awakened than I.  I trust that you moved more easily into compassion for all involved, skipping the condemning story-line from the start.  I trust that each of us, when encountering tough situations that break us, will feel from a wide open heart that knows suffering for what it is.  I trust that we will feel the suffering, acknowledge the vastness of it, and stretch ourselves to heal it with love and compassion, and not with fear and indignation.  I trust that we will all give ourselves to that which breaks our hearts the most, in our work and in our play; allowing our hearts to heal and not to harden, in the process.  I hope for a sane and kinder world where events like this cannot happen.  I trust in Love, and I trust in each one of us.

And I wish the very best for you,
Analisa B

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