Under normal circumstances ...

As I write this note tonight, across the room my son (age 11) is sitting in front of the tv with two rather plump beige coloured rats running over him ... under normal circumstances, I would be horrified and considering a call to the exterminator ... but the normal circumstances in our home means that Sam has the rats out for a run ...

We share our home with two little biege rats named Coco and Olivia. They complement the three cats, two dogs and three children who fill our house with activity ...

As I watch the rats scurry about on the love seat, I can't help but consider that in most of the world rats are nothing more then vermin ... heck, here on the prairies rats are considered vermin. Yet, here in our home, we have two little vermin as pets ...

It's all a matter of perspective ... one person's vermin can become another person's pet - or I can remember an article in a National Geographic where a man was walking home holding his dinner by the tails - he had a half a dozen rats he'd caught in the field ...

It's all a matter of perspective ...

What is right and just and holy to one, is evil to another ... look at the history of Apartheid. To the black South Africans it was an abomination to God, while to the faithful members of the Reformed Church in South Africa, they could see nothing wrong ...

Or another example that for some reason is in my head tonight is Galileo - the guy who pointed out to world a variety of scientific ideas and earned only the scorn and condemnation of the Catholic Church. It took close to five hundred years before the Catholic Church apologized to Galileo for its mistake ... the Church was just and holy - but brutally WRONG !!!!!!

What do we do when someone's perspective conflicts with what is right ?? They "KNOW" that they are right, and that what they are doing is "RIGHT" - but reality says something very different ...

The Church knew it was right to condemn Galileo, but it didn't make their actions honest or right - history showed who was right (five hundred years too late).

Sometimes its a matter of perspective, sometimes it is obvious who is in the right, and sometimes it takes a bit of work to show where the truth lies ... under normal circumstances, the truth is obvious ... but right now confusion seems to be the dominant feeling - may one day we'll be able to see things clearly ...

For now I'll enjoy watching the vermin crawl over our love seat and our son, and know that from where I sit, they are pets ... but that remains a matter of perpective ...

dayenu,