the thing about feeling bad…

This morning, I worked with my daughter at SOVA, an organization that provides food to people in need. Many parts of the day struck me, to be sure, but the one moment which really took me by surprise was within the first half hour or so. The head worker and leader of the daily volunteers, Lisa, was a small woman, with kind but distracted eyes. She was quick with us and with her instructions, and I figured it was genuinely hers to feel with so much to impart to so many new folk all the time singlehandedly. I vowed not to piss her off. When we went outside to pack up the vegetables, however, I overheard her conversation with another regular worker. What I could glean was that on her way over from Sylmar this morning, a horse was beaten badly by a group of people. Beaten and then shot, and either Lisa actually saw this horror or heard about it over the radio. She said it shook her to her core. But not only her sadness for the animal, but her hate for the people who inflicted this harm. She said she could picture the force it took to beat to submission such a huge and powerful creature as a horse. That force alone was inconceivable to her, let alone killing the creature itself. And as she drove all the way to West Hollywood, she could not shake the harm she herself wanted to inflict on the perpetrators! And that was her biggest pain, the anger she had toward those people and what she envisioned doing to them if she were able. I hurt for her. I hurt certainly for the story of the horse, but for how much suffering she was causing herself with her shame over what she wanted for those folks who spread such violence into the world. I noticed her mood lighten as the day went on, and she was so impressed with our children’s help, and she said for her helping those in need was her best remedy. I realized here the power of forgiveness, how powerful a tool it truly is. And the power of the process of giving to others when you are hurting. I hope tonight, she forgives herself. I hope she is sitting with a lovely meal, and I hope she knows her compassion for the horse and the care she gave to all of us and the many strangers who eat because of her are the take-aways from a conflicted day. May she and all of us beings, everywhere, go in peace.