A Baha’i prayer, from a comment on John’s blog:
O God! Educate these children. These children are the plants of Thine orchard, the flowers of Thy meadow, the roses of Thy garden. Let Thy rain fall upon them; let the Sun of Reality shine upon them with Thy love. Let Thy breeze refresh them in order that they may be trained, grow and develop, and appear in the utmost beauty. Thou art the Giver. Thou art the Compassionate.
– `Abdu’l-Bahá
I will love the light for it shows me the way.
Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
~Og Mandino
This weekend we watched Ratatouille. Fun. Well-written, well-crafted. Almost forgot for a moment that it WAS A MOVIE ABOUT A RAT. Almost.
The night before the movie I had a run-in with an ROUSS (Rodent of Unusual Size) on my front porch. Thinking it was just a charming little raccoon that was fiddling with the garbage bag that I’d inadvertently left on the stoop, I peeked out the trough the screen door to the see the little critter. Instead I found a fully-opened (previously knotted shut) grocery bag with a ginormous skin tail and hindquarters hanging out of it. Not a rat, it was just a few times worse: a POSSUM. Ugh.
What followed, for me, was part panic attack, part meltdown. I wish I could understand why I react the way I do to such creatures. But it was like the whole universe had suddenly gone dark and sucked me into a whole and the only thing that was in that hole with me was my nemesis Mr. ROUSS. And he was in attack mode.
I mean, I knew that the possum was on one side of that screen door and I was on the other. I knew I had my John and two kitties between me and the ROUSS. I knew that the varmint was way more interested in my trash than in me. But for about 3 minutes all of those rational thoughts were gone and all I could hardly breathe, much less be rational about the fact that on the porch, where I had been standing just a few moments before when I walked home (in the dark) from my neighbor’s home, was a RODENT. And I just wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to exit my house or live a normal life. Because RODENTS exist in this world and I would never escape from them again.
Deep breath. Sigh.
So I went to see the ratflick anyways and I was mostly okay. My breath got a little shallow when the colony exploded out of the farmhouse ceiling. But other than that the RAT-ness of the film was abstracted and cute enough for me that I was a-ok.
Hmmmmm…..but Ellycat has been spending a lot of time with me out of doors ever since.
PS: Still haven’t forgiven Pixar for naming the rat “Remy”…..
