I was waiting my turn in the barbershop today when my cellphone rang. It was the Humane Society. I went out into the alley to take the call.
The veterinarian we have been working with thought we should at least try to relinquish Hannah to the Humane Society, so I dutifully called them, though with plenty of concern about the dangers of them re-homing Hannah inappropriately. Turns out, not an option. They told me to take her back to the other shelter -- the one that said she was "good with children" in the first place, despite my concerns about the ethics / judgment of that place. I also learned that Hannah probably could not pass the Humane Society's temperament test (it would include strangers reaching for her collar).
The thing that was most striking in this experience wasn't the conversation with the Humane Society. This was someone putting up boundaries -- understandably -- and doing so in that way that is efficient, practiced, and repetitive. I recognized it well, having employed that strategy at times myself in my career as a social worker. It happens when we are overloaded by suffering, and / or forget that there is a real person on the other end of the phone. Both ends of the phone, really.
So there in the alley, I am in a tearful conversation about this painful situation when along the sidewalk comes a woman, maybe homeless, with a granny cart. She had bright blue eyes set into a wrinkled face, no top teeth, and a few very prominent bottom teeth with some gaps in between them. She saw me on the phone crying. She stopped and looked me very deeply in the eyes, and started mumbling some completely unintelligible mix of syllables which were as clear an expression of compassion as I have ever heard. She held out her left hand to me, and I took her hand with my right, and we stood there for a few moments, the harried shelter worker reciting policies in my ear, and this Bodhisattva of the streets pouring a balm of presence and metta right through her eyes and into my heart.
4 comments:
Beautiful. Both of you - Avalokiteshvara in their many guises.
Genju
Beautiful moment, it never ceases to amaze me where compassion can lie....
Believing someone is headed for a disaster and we have the power to prevent that disaster if we can just control them and others is a path of tears, frustration & heartache. Every parent knows that story well. It is a seductive line of thought because it seems so right. I find my benefit from believing that story is because I get to be important, a savior, the person who knows what's right, and a dictator of other people's lives (aka God). I enjoy believing it, that is, until I realize I have disconnected/lost the person I love because I have converted them into the label "threatened" and I have turned the people in my life into "hindrances" or "helps" in achieving my goal to save someone from disaster. That disconnection is what ends up being the disaster. The disaster I fear so much for my love one never happens-except over and over in my mind.
108 - thank you, as always.
ezzirrah - thanks for stopping by, nice to meet you!
Cathy - I think also a good amount of consultation can help us snap out of out fantasy story lines. Though resting in the truth of our hearts, however we can access that as clearly as possible, and acting from that. I hope I am getting your meaning. Thank you.
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