Silverwalk Hermitage

Arthur Lichtenberger, the twenty-first Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, offered these
words of Lenten advice:

• Fast from criticism, and feast on praise.
• Fast from self-pity, and feast on joy.
• Fast from ill-temper, and feast on peace.
• Fast from resentment, and feast on contentment.
• Fast from jealousy, and feast on love.
• Fast from pride, and feast on humility.
• Fast from selfishness, and feast on service.
• Fast from fear, and feast on faith

I like this.  It is a far cry from giving up the candy of my youth. Oh, the guilt of forgetting and eating a chocolate bar!  This reflection sends us inward where growth and change happen, directing us to fruits of the Spirit and not self-imposed limitations of daily life.  These are more difficult, more demanding, more life changing than giving up that candy.  The implied discipline may have been good but I never felt that it changed my life.  However, should I truly seek to fast and feast as noted by the good Bishop, my life should not only be changed but enriched beyond my imagining – with no guilt.

Lent is a time of reflection all round.  I have been driven by recent events within Silverwalk Hounds to recall and re-evaluate the mission and original purpose of the sanctuary.  It was not to rescue and save scads of dogs, though there are more than too many needing rescue due to our uncivil management of our pet populations.   What I set out to do was to foster or rescue, at the max, a matching number of dogs to those I owned – which now is six.  The reason for the low number was I wanted to intimately know each dog, work and train her, prepare her for her new home, being able to give her adopter a very detailed understanding of how this dog was, is now at the time of adoption and hopefully will be.  (Sound familiar? – HA).   However,  in the past year or so, I have had up to 20 dogs total!  Chaos!  I have ended up chasing my tail, which I don’t even have!  Why was this so?  In this part of the country, Beagles and hounds are “a dime a dozen.”  There are enough unethical hunters who let “sub-par” performing hounds loose or don’t seek to find them.  Even if they chose to humanely shoot them, it would be better than what many face on their own in the wild.  The need for hound rescue is great – and I let myself get sucked into abandoning, forgetting my original purpose, for the greater good.  However,  the physical and personnel plant of Silverwalk had not changed with the result of increased stress to hounds and self.

Today, Silverwalk Beagle & Hound Sanctuary, Inc. had its first formal board meeting.  During my presentation of how SW came to be, I clarified to myself and the board members  how I had no desire to be large; that I wanted small numbers so I could work individually with each dog.  SW has a wonderful board.  The support was palpable, several members are much more geared to fundraising than I (which is why one has a board to begin with – diverse talent to get the job done!).  A very unique yet win-win proposal was made.  It will take time to see it to fruition but prayers are requested.

Here we are in Lent – the time to return (even in a “worldly” concept such as a dog sanctuary), repent and be reconciled within ourselves and our calls to ministry but more so, with God.  All indeed will be well.