Verse — Sanky Reed
Standing in the center aisle
of the small church, she told her friend
about a thief the night before
(while she was sleeping) broke into
her shed and stole her new chainsaw.
Agnes said, “Well, we should pray
for him–we are in church.” Sanky
said, “Let’s pray he cuts off his leg!”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL
I had 2 drinks in 4 hours–
they each guzzled 10 or more:
Scotch & sodas, gin & tonics,
wines with dinner, bottles pour
port and Irish cream and brandy,
Chambord, ouzo, B & B.
Friends for years, they each had stories–
I, of course, had heard them all
many times before: the punch lines
had no punch– they each just fell
on the dirty dishes, greasy
napkins, glasses finally empty.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL
I’m SURE this is a very old memory!
Leah Thomas and family
ODE TO LEAH THOMAS
Like light
Like joy
Like sun breaking through a storm
Her laughter
Brightens the room
Breaks the ice
Fills it with peace.
Mama walks lightly
Amid the trials and the cares
Quick as a black panther
Steady as a turtle
She coos the tenderness of
the turtle dove
walks with the strength of a lion.
With steady hand
With sturdy faith
And clarity of mind
She laughs
And soars her craft
Through clouds and storms
To lead us on and through.
Like light,
Like joy,
Like sun breaking through a storm,
She laughs,
She brightens the room,
She wipes our tears
She fills us with her peace.
– Gordon C. Stewart, Executive Director, Legal Rights Center, Feb. 1, 2005.
Sebastian
At six-weeks old, he was cute, but he was a “he”. We wanted a “she”.
We had called ahead to ask whether any females were left from the half Bichon Frise – half Shih Tzu litter.
By the time we arrived, the females had been taken. Since we were there and the puppies were out, we stayed to watch them play and to get a better sense for the breed.
Disappointed that there was no female, but unable to forget the pup that came to Kay, we got back in the car and headed for home.
Two blocks from the kennel, Kay broke the silence. “I can’t leave him. I love that puppy. We have to go back and get him.” We went back and got him. Kay held him in a blanket on the way home.
We named him Sebastian. He just seemed like a Sebastian.
Thirteen years later, April 20, 2013, Kay held him once more in a blanket … on the way to the veterinarian.
I keep waiting for him to follow me up or down the stairs, settle by my feet at the computer desk, nuzzle up to my thigh during our nap, pester us to go upstairs when it’s bedtime. The house is not as full.
We got a “he” for a little while. A gift named Sebastian. We never “owned” him. We don’t really own a thing.
Bald priest, Fr. Paul Jarvis, blesses furry friend
The bond between person and pet is like no other relationship, because the communication between fellow creatures is at its most basic. Eye-to-eye, a man and his dog, or a woman and her cat, are two creatures of love.
No wonder people enjoy the opportunity to take their animal companions to church for a special blessing. Church is the place where the bond of creation is celebrated.
At Franciscan churches, a friar with brown robe and white cord often welcomes each animal with a special prayer. The Blessing of Pets usually goes like this:
“Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. You called forth fish in the sea, birds in the air and animals on the land. You inspired St. Francis to call all of them his brothers and sisters. We ask you to bless this pet. By the power of your love, enable it to live according to your plan. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures! Amen.”
Father Paul, one of God’s balding creatures, is Pastor of St. Joseph in Rosemount, Minnesota, and former Pastor of Guardian Angels Catholic Community in Chaska. He is recovering from emergency open heart surgery. Blessings to Paul, his family, friends, parishioners, and furry friends.
Maggie caring for her sick friend Doug
Sparky and Doug Hall, Wabasha, MN
Dogs touch the deepest parts of us. These photos were taken in the home of Doug and Mary Hall in Wabasha, MN several years ago. Doug, a “street lawyer” (John Gresham) if ever there was one, founding Director of the Legal Rights Center, Inc. in Minneapolis, lawyer for American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee, and restorative justice pioneer, was dying of cancer.
Doug and Mary’s dog Sparky, a lovely Labrador retriever, never left Doug’s side.
Click Nature Boy for Nat “King” Cole singing there was a boy who wandered far only to learn that “the greatest thing is to love and be loved in return.”
If you want attention…No…if you want to love and be loved in return, become a nature boy or girl. Get yourself a dog or two. You’ll be blessed by them. And, when they finally leave your side, your friends will sympathize.
This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN the Sunday following the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It draws on Red Sox player David Ortiz’s nationally televised statement “This is our (expletive) city!”; Richard Rohr’s “Finding God in the Depths of Silence” (Sojourners, March, 2013), and the Epistle of James’ insight that the “tongue” (i.e., speech) is “a restless evil” ready to curse others even while it blesses “the God and Father of us all.” “Brothers and sisters,” writes James, “this should not be so!”
The sermon calls for engagement in the inner silence that moves down into the undivided reality that words so easily and quickly divide and destroy. It ends with the Pie Jesu from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem and the invitation “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Today’s post on FOX News is inspired by Rene Girard’s “Mimetic” theory and an Aesop’s fable. First the fable.
“THE FOX AND THE CROW”
A Fox (read FOX) saw a Crow (the American people) fly off with a piece of cheese (real information) in its beak and settle on a branch in a tree.
“That’s for me, as I am a Fox,” said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree.
“Good day, Mistress Crow,” he cried. “How well you are looking today: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds (parties, races, countries), just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of all Birds.”
The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth, the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox.
“That will do,” said he. “That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese, I will give you a piece of advice for the future: ‘Do not trust flatterers.'”
THE SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Rene Girard’s theory of “mimetic” desire, mimetic rivalry, and the scapegoat mechanism explains the secret of the appeal and success of FOX News. The Fox takes the cheese it extols by flattering its viewers as the true patriots, the lovers of goodness and truth.
FOX News is the 21st Century voice of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI). Joe McCarthy and what came to be known as “McCarthyism” scared the American public in a search for neighbors who might be closeted communists or communist sympathizers until news anchor Edward R. Murrow ended McCarthy’s witch-hunt with a single newscast.
As in that sordid history of the Salem Witch Trials in which the Puritans were summoned by their magistrates and clergy to rid themselves of evil (see Kai Erickson’s The Wayward Puritans: a Study in the Sociology of Deviance), McCarthy’s hunt was a convention of social control to maintain the old fraying religious, political, cultural consensus. FOX resurrects those shameful chapters of the American experience.
There is no quicker way to rally people than to create a scapegoat (a shared enemy, the embodiment of evil). All it takes is a FOX to flatter the “Queen of all Birds” into dropping the Cheese.
Maggie and Morning Love
Magnanimous mellifluence,
Attentive, affectionate, alert,
Good dog, as good as any
God could ever send to such as
I, the aging friend she trusted
Even at the end.
– The day after Maggie left us, April 23, 2013
Maggie waiting to play
Maggie and Sebastian romping in the snow
The day after Sebastian died on Saturday, Maggie’s tumor broke through the skin. She’s always been a brave trooper. The vet said that Westies are the toughest in bearing pain. But she was not herself. She was in pain. She couldn’t walk. She was grieving. She was bleeding. There was no way back. No way to make it better. There was no joy. I loved this dog so much. Maggie’s been my companion for all these years. They say Westies are the most human of dogs. It was true of her. She was all love and all play. I wept like a baby yesterday, as I had on Saturday, when we “put her down,” as they say.
The house is empty of Maggie and Sebastian. But it is not empty of love. Kay, who is more in touch with her feelings than I, expressed them well this morning in an email to her friend Mary.
Empty…..that’s exactly it. Empty….rattling around in a cage that used to have a wheel for multiple animals, moving, squeaking, flying high, deliriously fun and noisy noisy noisy…… And now dead silence, nothing. They left the cage for whatever eternal freedom awaits us all…..there had better be an assemblance of a heaven full of love and resurrection of all the bodies of those we love or I won’t go.
It was the right time, completely worn out caring for two pups that needed carrying everywhere all day and even “up” to get a drink in the night, or outside to pee in the dark of 2:00 am…..we’re too old for this…..but we had no need for NOTHING, no lovely, characterized soft dazzlingly sweet creatures, instead.
We went to bed last night, finally getting to hold each other without the crowding of legs and the sooo familiar and comforting creaturely bodies nestled together…but we were left without a “pack” and we had no “fam”……something that filled every crevice of our lives so completely. We cried together and held each other, but there was no real consolation, since right now it is ALL LOSS. This place will be filled in with new energy or new peace, we will get to be tranquil…..but we have less spunk and personality and affection, oh so much less of everything precious.
I hold the “rubber band of my ambivalence” in high tension. Here it is 4:45 am and I am having a quiet time by the fire with my morning coffee…..a week ago I would have to hope and pray that one or both (not simultaneously) would not have to be brought down to pee……so I would break into my warmth serenity to put on shoes, coat, ear band, get a little sack, a leash, different shoes, go out in the cold, wait endlessly for them to find just the right smell, or the right place that hadn’t been used before, and they never wanted to come in, because frozen smells from other dogs were infinitely more wonderful than house smells….so I would have to practically drag them inside again….then feed them, and put them on the couch on the soft blanket across from my chair, get them all settled…go back to my chair, get settled, my coffee, my ipad……and, you know what would happen next…..they both would come off the couch and want to sit with me on my chair (half the size). They were always undeniable, however much I tried, I would say no, ignore, plead, but if a Westie wants something, there is no denying her, however much you try to command that breed, why would I ever even try, after 15 years, I should know….so up goes the coffee cup to the table, the ipad to the table…..I reach down to scoop her up (and sometimes him too, all 3 of us on this little chair)…. I am scrunched sideways, contorted to get them to settle down so they will sleep again….and, again grab my coffee, my ipad, start reading or writing (which presented an even more contorted arrangement above their lounging bodies because I would have no lap then)……… And then….and then…..they eventually, 3 minutes, 5 minutes……they would want down again.
The sadness I hold in my heart – the desire, the physical ache for their return – is a study in ambivalence. I am nuts with sorrow for something I have been waited for for a long long time.
Love conquers all, I tell you. Even high maintenance love. Their 13-14+ years of collective memories will permeate my soul with sadness that will eventually lift to the highest level of sweet sweet melancholy……….but you and I will know the bottom line. The tension is now resolved, and with grave sadness I walk forward into my freedom unencumbered.
Thanks for hearing my 5:00 am confession, my soiled sadness. I know you understand. You spent years in the same condition with many of your dogs before they died. You would have similar tales to tell. I guess dog people are just special souls.
“Lord, help me be half the man/woman my dog thinks I am.”
Views from the Edge 