Thursday, April 22, 2010

Points of View, Ownership and Boundaries

Now for the reflection:
While reading the Amulet of Samarkand I noted with increasing dissatisfaction my own demons. One night I called my dog, Angus, into the house for the evening and ended tripping over his back foot. I painfully skinned a knee and jammed a toe. Happily, Angus did not pounce on me when I finally landed in a heap near the side-walk. Unfortunately, my son’s dog, Malta, did. Worried I would suffer greater injury I quickly connected with her jaw and sent her reeling. Immediately shame and guilt confronted me for my outburst and as always upon confrontation I raced to justify my actions. Malta deserved it, I thought. She’s a menace and probably should be put down. Stupid dog. To my horror I heard myself sounding like any of the depraved magicians in Bartimaeus, speaking about “commoners,” “muggles” in Harry Potter parlance. And this wasn’t the first time the book helped peel back a bit of muddle in my mind.

My point of view seems always clouded and ever subject to blame and shame. I might have rightly kept Malta from me for logical reasons, perhaps not so zealously, but necessarily in any event. But my response to the accuser points ever diligently to the nature of original sin, to the ownership we all bear as humans of this point of view where we see so darkly if at all through the glass. Enough for now. Thank you for reading.

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