Thanks for posting!

I know what a dear he was to you – well, IS to you, right?

Sending you much love, as I know you sent him. Lucky guy to be with you, even if it was just three months. (You know how animals can’t gauge time worth a crap, right? So it probably felt like a good long lifetime to him.)

Thanks for posting here, Judi. Your perspective is one that feels really familiar to me. On MANY counts.

Animals know. They’re like little children that way.

To the topic – there is a bizarre fascination with morbidity in society, which I believe accounts for the success of publications like The Enquirer, political campaigns based on smearing opponents, sensationalized news reporting — even those late night shows of Third World starvation are really little more than emotional blackmail.

Show me images of babies with distended bellies from starvation and I feel anything but joy. If I give money here, it’s going with all those feelings and thoughts of anything but joy. How can that be good for the cause?

Show me pictures of little kids getting an education, people working together building proper shelter, tending to crops, even hauling clean water in buckets, and the money I send there will be at one with my feelings of joy, and hope, a genuine loving desire to help. Even if both scenarios raised the exact same dollar amount, we all know which set of funds will be of greater benefit.

Personally, when I see the good an organization does, if I can see joy, and love, well heck, I want to be a part of THAT – it leaves me feeling much better than what the morbidity mongers leave on my retina.

Thanks Jeannette for the perspective of do we need to know what is wrong to fix it. I guess I’m still a bit stuck on this one. I do think you are spot on with it being a “contrast” issue. “I know this is what I don’t want so I will focus all my energy on what I do want”. But I guess if I hadn’t seen the pics and vids of the suffering I wouldn’t know about the contrast and wouldn’t necessarily be focusing on what I did want. Not sure. Perhaps if I believed everyone loved and respected nature as much as we all obviously do, I would be focusing on that belief as my reality and therefore creating more of it!

I do so agree about holding the positive when being involved in rescue work. Our Marvin was very sick when he came to us as a result of being sorely neglected. I could have held this picture of him forever and held him in that space. But I knew what an evolved soul he was and treated him as such. I wanted to hate the world for treating him so, but he inspired me not to do so. Sadly he only had three wonderful months with us and was pts three weeks ago. I could so easily fall into railing at the world that he didn’t have longer once he was safe and loved. But from what we have all said here I will hold my energies around all the wonderful people who rescued him and brought him to us and to safety.
Judi

We’ve got good company, at any rate! lol

Much love, my friend.

I learn to view the world in terms of what needs to be fixed. Even today, I catch myself seeing the world and myself from this point of view.

I like organizations or groups that bring people together-for fun, empowerment-it doesn’t really matter. I’ve broadened my point of view of activism and social change-don’t we all do that just by intentionally creating our life? Writing in blogs like this?

A fave group from my youth development days is http://www.youthonboard.org, an organization that fosters youth leadership and improved relationships between youth and adults. I’ve used their publications extensively.

haha, I also love hotflashdances.com, a for profit organization that hosts retro dances for middle aged lesbians in Portland, Seattle, Eugene, Phoenix and Tucson. Music we know all the words to, and know how to dance to. …haha, 200-400 middle aged lesbians dancing and having fun, and still home before midnight, that’s activism, right? (can i confess that I organize the Phoenix and upcoming Tucson dances) ha ha. . .I do like happy activism.

I think it says something about YOU that you’re able to see it’s easy to focus on the positive in your volunteer work – because I know folks who might be in that same position and do nothing but complain about the people who create our work, if you know what I mean.

What I’m saying is it isn’t necessarily a given that because we get to work with the animals that we experience it as positive.

Example, I remember a husky we fostered a couple years ago who had been dragged behind the truck by his owner (the shelter called us in on emergency to get the dog out before the owner came to pick the dog up – because he WAS coming back for his dog and the law couldn’t stop him from claiming him, if you can believe it).

Anyway, we’ve got this unbelievably sweet big husky laying on the dining room floor, who literally can’t move because of the pain he’s in, and (understandably) all my ex could do was swear about the guy who would do this.

I was thinking how amazing it was that this dog still trusted people – strangers, even – when he was in so much pain, and how brave and smart the shelter workers were to call us when it was imperative …

Same situation – two different perspectives. (And I will say that sometimes I’m the one doing the swearing. I think it was just easy to offset my ex in that case, rather than get swept up in the negativity of it.)

My point being that you have an empowering perspective, Jennifer. Kudos to you for that.

PS – THANK YOU for the most excellent gift I just received in the mail! You are amazingly generous, Jennifer!

And thanks also for saying all the right things to make me feel comfortable accepting it. You have a gifted feel for energy. Namaste!