Rescue Journal

the point of the weigh scales

Carol  ·  Aug. 11, 2014

is not to beat ourselves up over mistakes (altho all good people do in fact beat themselves up over mistakes that cause others harm...bad people don't care.) the purpose is to strip away the blinders we sometimes try to wear. most of us have seen "rescues" with shelters, houses, apartments filled with filth and suffering animals...if we haven't seen them in person, we have seen them on the internet or on the nightly news...rescues gone bad. sometimes they start out that way, people without even the basic necessary skills to care for others. sometimes they start out with higher ideals but they slip into insidious decline from the compromises made in providing good care. and there are people in rescue whose animals not only come in second to profit, to ego, to winning badges of courage with other people out there....but the animals are sometimes even stepping stones to get there.

no rescue is ever perfect..each has their own challenges to be faced. but do they strive for that unattainable perfection for the animals or do they just shrug their shoulders in defeat due to the impossibility or just pretend that they really do care?

the animals are the weigh scales, we cannot trick or fool them...they know.

if every rescuer knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that instead of that stupid rainbow bridge story where rescuers receive hundreds of animals bows...that instead they will face them as their judge and jury who lived and felt the reality of their rescue...how many of us would approach that bridge without at least some degree of trepidation and fear?

not me...i have past choices, decisions, ignorance, actions, and inactions to fear.

that is the weigh scale...every moment of carelessness, thoughtlessness, unkindness, selfishness, stupidity, ignorance, every lie, falsehood, misleading story, hidden truth undeniably stacked on that scale before us to see.

would that make a difference right now to how we are living?

you know the catholics were not so far off on their stories of heaven and hell, good and evil...those stories sometimes kept folks in place while struggling to stay on the right road because they believed that at some pearly gate point, every single past sin of action or omission... could no longer be hidden.

whatever. i am not trying to guilt or fear any of us into doing rescue well...it has to be by free will and determined choice to have any true value. but i remain aware every day that the animals in my care live by the choices i make and i want them all to live well.

for me, that is the value of always viewing them as an undeniable moral weigh scale.

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