Shedding Light

In his quest to see how much he can disrupt the end of President Biden's term in office his repugnant successor has been announcing appointments that seem to be an attempt to surround himself, and inflict on the rest of the country the most unqualified and repugnant people he can find and announce via social media a slew of things he intends to do on 'Day One' It's difficult to avoid all this and even more difficult to know what to think about it all. It seems that having taken control of Congress and the judiciary, and having surrounded himself with people who know nothing about the jobs they have been appointed to do, he will have nobody to blame but himself and the people who voted for him when things don't work out. With Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, I thought I would offer this parable taken from the book I am currently reading, The Grey Wolf  by Louise Penny.

One evening, as they sat by a fire on the shore...the Cree elder told the Abbot something that had happened to him when he was a child. His grandfather, the Chief at the time, told the boy that he had two wolves inside him, tearing at his insides. One of them, a grey wolf wanted the old man to be strong and compassionate. Wide and courageous enough to be forgiving. The other, a black wolf, wanted him to be vengeful. To forget no wrong. To forgive no slight. To attack first. To be cruel and cunning and brutal to friends and enemies alike. To spare no one. Hearing this from his grandfather terrified the child. He ran away. It took a few days before he dared approach the old man again. When he did, he asked his grandfather, 'Which wolf will win, the grey or the black?...His grandfather said, 'The one that I feed.'

I hope that tomorrow, as those of us who live on this side of The Pond celebrate Thanksgiving, and contemplate what is to come, that we can hope that as we eat with family and friends, and think about gratitude, we will also be thinking about feeding the grey wolf.