The Cat, the Rat, the Goat, and a Hundred Chickens

So, a goat moved in next door. A very loud goat. And while it is fun to peek over the fence and see its beard and horns, it is somewhat inconvenient that the goat chooses to lament his situation very early in the morning. At some point, I am sure, we will be no longer be troubled by the noise of this particular goat, but at that time, we will probably have some deeply sad children, as the neighbors consume their cute gray friend.

However, in my office, there is another gray companion who is not so cute, and really not a friend. He appeared running around the rafters, an enormous rat a few feet above me; yesterday and today, he decided that the area right above my desk is a good place to hang out. As I pointed out our visitor to my colleague, he suggested that we get the cat. It took a little while, because the cat didn’t want to enter, but after some time, we were able to shut the cat and the rat in my office, while I waited patiently outside for the execution to take place. It didn’t.

Instead, the rat escaped into the chicken coop attached to my office, where it terrorized a hundred chickens, all of whom are waiting to be killed in the next seven days. The red truck appears, the chickens get loaded, and the number slowly dwindles. They are now fully grown, so this flock will soon disappear. In any case, after the rat ran around with the chickens, and the cat gave up in disgust, I returned to my office, and we continued our work on a grant application. This particular grant would offer funding for an income-generating project, to sustain feeding programs in five of our community schools. 

Many of you know that our family is vegetarian; Joel and I haven’t eaten meat in fifteen years, and our children have been vegetarian their whole lives. And so, the impending doom of the goat, the chickens, and even the rat should disturb me. But it doesn’t. So many things are different here, and different now. So many of my thoughts are gray and uncertain. I am delighted that the chickens are being sold and slaughtered; the income from their sale will support amazing projects in the church. And our neighbor, the goat, will provide protein for people who need it. And I am glad the rat is gone, dead or alive, so that my colleague and I can continue working on a vital grant application, to feed children who are very vulnerable.

I love the way I am challenged here, the way my assumptions and way of life are questioned by the circumstances that I live in. My theology, my world view, my issues with trust and self-confidence, my dogmatic perspectives...almost all of the truths in my life have been expanded and nuanced through daily life in a developing country, with peers who see the world in phenomenally different ways than I do.

In any case, I am not going to mourn the goat, or the chickens, or the rat (if the cat finally does her job). Instead, I am going to celebrate getting the grant application done. I am going to celebrate the young adult volunteers working in the community schools. I am going to celebrate the initial stages of translating the curriculum. I am going to celebrate the HIV/AIDS youth training. There is a lot to celebrate here, and a rat-free office is one of them, God willing.