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Be A Guard Dog

Recently in our sheep pasture, we found a healthy lamb with its throat gouged out, the sad victim of a coyote strike.  Thankfully, no other lambs or mothers were harmed.  After blocking the hole dug under the pasture fence, we made sure our Great Pyrenees guard dog was out with the sheep to protect them each night.

Living at the edges of nature’s life and death cycles has sharpened my senses.  I see more clearly how nature and its survival instincts often mirror how humans behave.  We know there are similar dynamics of flight or fight shared by animals and humans when faced with fearful or potentially harmful challenges to with his throat gouged themselves, to family or community. 

But for humans, running or standing our ground depends not only on instinct, but whether we discern there is truth to the threat.  

For instance, we are hearing repeated threats to our nation as it tries to be “Great Again.”  There’s fake news, lying journalists, deplorable asylum seekers, immigrants crossing our borders who rape and rob, intelligence agencies that collude and manipulate, judges who are too liberal, youth who are too radical about gun control.  One has to think, are these really true threats to our common life, our cherished institutions, our constitutional freedoms – or are these claims themselves the real predators gnawing away at our democratic values? 

I believe it’s time to stand our moral ground, plug up the holes where true predators try to slip in to create havoc, and be the guard dogs who bark their heads off to protect those made vulnerable by repeated lies. 

I’m Connie Seraphine, and that is my Perspective.

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