sometimes people tell me that they are amazed at what i do here. and they all say..."i don't know how you do it"
if i were to look over the fence at the heart of saints, from the outside, i would be amazed too, because truly, it is amazing. i would think it is amazing because i love animals, and saints is the kind of place that i always dreamed of when i thought of my kind of heaven.
now, i realize that some of these people may just be trying to be nice. maybe they are really thinking, "holy crap, this woman is crazy, why is she kissing that pig?" but i choose to ignore that possiblity.
sooo, having said all that, how does one create amazing( at least in one's own mind), in any arena, animal welfare, technology, education, science, the arts, advocasy, or whatever? how do we stand tall in the midst of what we do and feel a sense of accomplisment? by taking one step, and another, and another, down a road that is lit by our passion and our beliefs. we don't have to spend our lives as spectators and witness's, we can take those first few steps and become something more.
saints did not magically appear one day from a dream. the road to saints began decades ago with a few steps in a certain direction, and then a few more. between the time that i rescued strays on my own, to fostering for the spca, to fostering for sans, to katies place, to arriving here at saints, are many past footsteps with literally thousands of animals as company along the road.
great things are not accomplished by great people, they are accomplished by average folks who start to walk a path and just keep going.
my daughter once wrote a paper for university about our apathetic society. apathy is born not of uncaring, but of helplessness and uncertainty. we are apathetic because we don't know what to do and so we do nothing and pretend it is just the way it is.
it is not too much to take a step forward here and there. to take a walk and maybe see where it leads. somewhere along the way, the path becomes the journey and the journey must be seen to it's end. that is where passion and committment are born. and those two things lead to the land of amazing.
saints is only amazing to those who visit us now, it was not so amazing or special in the first few miles. it was just a little walk with a few furry friends who needed a helping hand.
if we believe that the trees in the forest can grow to amazing heights, so can we.