All Dogs Go To Heaven

I miss my childhood home: the one where I learned about family and friends, joy and sadness, dying and death, but most of all, about love.  Our house was a ranch-style house in a middle class neighborhood.  It was made of brick with a small front porch and a big back patio.  A chain link fence where our black poodle, Twice, liked to play fenced in our backyard.  Our front yard was bordered on two sides by a white, split-rail fence that I learned to walk on and do stunts, pretending I was a tightrope walker.  We had green grass, big pine trees, lots of shrubs, and flowers.  I’m sure my parents did a lot of upkeep, but for me it was simply idyllic.

My best friend, Callie, lived next door and across the street lived our playmates, the two Jeffs and Jason.  We rode our bikes together, played baseball in one of the Jeff’s front yard, and had the same after-school sitter (think Mrs. Figg, only with fewer cats).  Life was pretty great, but it wasn’t perfect.

My rabbit, Sunny the Bunny died first.  It was the first time I had ever experienced death and even though I remember being upset, I don’t particularly remember the pain.  We didn’t get another rabbit, but I still had Twice and my goldfish, Romeo and Juliet.  I don’t remember the death of my goldfish; I think my parents told me they went to live in the sea (which I didn’t realize was code for “flushed down the toilet”).  But Twice’s death was painful.  I can still remember every detail of that experience almost forty years later.  She had dug a hole under our fence and been hit by a car several blocks away.  She made it back to our front porch, where I heard her scratch on the front door, and found her only for her to die in my arms.  I cried and cried on my parent’s bed.

It wasn’t long before we got a new puppy, a white toy poodle that I got to pick out and named Buffy.  My gang of playmates came over and she was so tiny we would carry her around in our pockets.  Buffy was a great dog and lived well into her (and my) teen-age years before dying of old age.  Though her death was hard, as has been the deaths of all my dogs, none were as hard as Twice’s.  I’m not sure what it is about certain people or pet’s deaths that makes them harder than others, but I do know that when they are sudden and unexpected, they seem to stick with you a bit longer.

Twice’s death was heart breaking for an eight year old.  But it was also important in teaching me about life.  I learned that pets don’t last forever and I value and appreciate them even more so because of it.  Because of that loss, when my great-grandparents died a few years later, I not only had a reference point but I could ask some questions about death and heaven that, as a ten year old, I wouldn’t have been able to frame otherwise.  I also found some comfort in knowing that my grandparents and Twice would be together, since all dogs go to heaven.

As the years progressed and other pets died, I learned about saying good-bye, about burials and funerals, but most of all, I learned about love.  I learned that even though the amount of pain could feel almost unbearable, the joys of past memories could bring a watery smile and with a little time, that watery smile could become a beacon of hope, a remembrance of light when the world seems dark.  I learned that the pain was worth it because the joy and love were so much greater and that I could take the experiences of our shared life together and make the world greater too.  As I grew older and more pets died, I learned to bury them with liturgy and plant trees over their resting places as visual reminders of the hope and joy they had brought to my life; visible signs of the resurrection I believe we are all called too.

It is a hard thing to know death, but it is a hard thing to know life.  Life always offers a certain amount of gain and loss.  But it is not a hard thing to know hope.  My pets, both the living and the dead, are a constant reminder of hope.  May yours be to you as well.

Candice+

We’re collecting canned pet food and newspapers for the humane society this month at St. John’s.  We will bless that food at our Celebration of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4 at 5:30pm where we will also bless our pets.  I pray you might join with us in giving a little hope to our furry friends and join us in blessing those who bring us hope as well—if not at St. John’s at a church wherever you live or attend.

Rolling in Dead Fish

My dog, Banshee, loves the beach.  She knows we are headed to the beach when we load up in the car and she gets in the back seat.  And she is excited.  She loves to run on the pier, bark at the pelicans, dig in the sand, and swim in the bay.  Its her favorite place on earth.

Banshee will return to me with a particular whistle. So, when we are at the beach and no fences separate our house from the neighbors, I feel rather comfortable allowing her to run free, knowing she will return when I whistle—at least, most of the time.

At times, Banshee finds some exciting treasure (at least in dog terms) and is tempted to not return when I whistle.  Her favorite treasure at the beach is dead fish.  Being a hound dog, she has quite a nose for sniffing out dead fish.  I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing when she’s on the dead-fish-prowl and will immediately whistle for her to come back.  Often, she’ll stop dead in her tracks as soon as I whistle and cast a look over her shoulder at me that says, “What?  I’m not up to anything.”  Sometimes, she’ll come running back to me and I lavish her with praise, “What a good dog!”  But other times, after looking back, she’ll put that nose down and start sniffing again, tracking the smell of the dead fish.  I whistle a second time and, she may put her head up and give me a scornful look communicating that I’ve no idea what I’m interrupting; other times she’ll just keep going—the temptation is too great.  Dead fish are, after all, the greatest treasure that can be found at the beach.

When that temptation proves too great, Banshee will race to the dead fish and proceed to roll in it so that she reeks of a gaggingly, disgusting smell that can be compared to nothing else on this earth.  I’ll continue to call her, and sometimes even have to go and get her, but whether she comes after being called or I go to get her, I always pet her and lavish her with praise.  You see, if I were to punish her or fuss at her, I know the next time I called and she had to decide between the dead fish and me, she’d just go for the dead fish.  But by always praising her for coming back to me, even if she has rolled in the stench beyond a thousand stenches, I know I’ve at least got a chance that she’ll choose me the next time. 

People often ask me if God is a punishing God.  The answer is no.  God does not punish, God calls to us to come to him over and over again.  God knows how tempted we are by the dead fish in our world, by the sin and corruption he would not have us choose.  But instead of fussing at us or spanking our nose with a rolled up newspaper, God welcomes us and lavishes us with praise when we choose him. 

That’s not to say that choosing a dead fish and refusing to respond to God’s call is not without consequences.  Banshee still has to get a bath whenever she rolls in dead fish because she smells terrible.  And as much as Banshee loves to swim in the bay, she feels the exact opposite about taking a bath—she associates water from the faucet and being lathered up with soap akin to having acid poured on you and then your skin flayed.  Its not my desire to punish her, but her free will that leads to the momentary despair of bath time.  And that’s the truth we must accept about God when it comes to our free will; God chooses us and God does not choose to punish us even when we choose the dead fish and, consequently, the cleansing bath.  That's a truth Banshee hasn't learned yet, and neither have we.

The Conditions of Mercy

 Music is unconditional.  It plays—I listen.  Or not. When I turn on my stereo and tune into Alabama Public Radio, music pours forth from my speakers, filling the room and cascading upon me in such a way that I can be drawn into its depths and float in its ethereal melodies.   I can choose to be engulfed in the notes and sounds of wind and string instruments in such a way that it stirs my soul.  Or, I can turn on my radio and allow the music to enter the room, but not enter me.  I may hear it, vaguely maintaining awareness of it, but in no way connecting with it.  The music hasn’t changed—it pours forth from my speakers unconditionally—regardless of whether or not I listen.  I am responsible for whether or not I hear it, not the music.  The very nature of music is to present itself in a particular way.  But to listen to music requires one to be in relationship with it, to choose it, to engage it.  The music is there.  The question is—am I?

                                            'The Unanswered Question' by Charles Ives 

Last week there was another mass shooting.  This time the shooting took place at a movie theater in Lafayette, LA.  Two people were killed, nine injured, and the shooter took his own life.  After hearing about the shooting, I posted on Twitter, “3 mass shootings in a month.  Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. #Lafayette #Chattanooga #Charleston.”  I grew up in the Catholic and Episcopal traditions and we often say this prayer during the season of Lent as a preparation for delving into the Word.  Lent is a penitential time; the shooting in Lafayette felt like it needed a penitential response (for reasons I am not going to go into—that’s another post).  The next morning when I looked at my Twitter feed, I had one reply.  Steve_J wrote, “What has the US done to cause Christ to show mercy to the US, much less the rest of the world?”

It took me a while to reply to Steve_J for three reasons:

1.     I don’t want to get into a “back ‘n forth” on Twitter;

2.     There is no easy answer though there is a faithful one; and,

3.     I’m not giddy about correcting someone else’s bad theology on social media.

We have been led to believe that we can do something to earn or lose the love of God.  This bad theology permeates our religious culture. Nothing we can do, or not do, lessens God’s grace and mercy for us.  Just ask the eleven disciples, the ones who abandoned Jesus on the cross and hid in the Upper Room after his crucifixion.  He greeted them with the word “peace” after his resurrection, not judgment and condemnation.  How much more does he greet us with that same word?

The U.S. (much less the rest of the world) can do nothing, nothing at all, to cause Christ to show mercy upon us.  Jesus pours out his mercy upon us of his own accord.  It is his nature to do so.  He will not give or deny mercy based on what we do.  Instead, the conditions of mercy were met a long time ago on Golgotha.  I don’t deserve that mercy, few do, and yet, the Good News is that it is not up to us.  It is up to God.

Suspending the Rules

After years of talking, debating, fighting, leaving—we made a decision on same sex marriage at General Convention.  Two resolutions passed—one provided a trial liturgy for marriage, another changed the canons to incorporate gender neutral language--maybe there was an inevitability in that, maybe not.  But what was sure, was the relief.  We were no longer spinning our wheels in the mud, getting everyone dirty.  Now we could begin to move forward, pour new wine into new wine skins because the old skins had been bursting for some time.  But in this moment of celebration for some, we cannot lose our pastoral stance.

For the most part, General Convention #78 delighted me, an event where a true spirit of unity and congeniality pervaded the floor of the House of Deputies.  Following a standard rule of order, agreed upon by all the deputations at the start of the legislative sessions, assisted that delightful spirit.  Our chaplain, The Rev. Lester McKenzie, who led us daily in prayer and singing, “We are one together—Yo, Yo, Yo,” also nurtured that spirit.

Often,  those words would be sung by various deputations who spontaneously broke into song at various times over the course of the convention.  Even though we knew we all didn’t agree on everything, those disagreements did not feel like rivalries or a classic "winning vs. losing" scenario.  (Though, yes, I am aware that there were those deputations who, in not having the vote go their way, felt that they had lost—especially in the marriage vote.)

Now, more than ever, we must come to this new thinking on marraige with compassion and concern for those who continue to struggle with same sex marriage—especially those whose context is vastly different from our own.  So, it was with some degree of empathy and frustration that I watched as the deputation from Honduras attempting to read a “minority report on marriage resolutions”, run out of their allotted time frame of four minutes to speak on the floor. In keeping with the Rules of Order, their microphone was cut off by the President of the House.  The report signed by twenty bishops voiced their dissent with the recently adopted resolutions.

After so much movement forward in the face of so much angst and challenge, our momentum became too great to stop or turn and we barreled into the iceberg.  We allowed legalism to once again silence the minority.  Maybe the rules didn't allow for it, but I wonder when compassion, especially in the face of dissension, became defined as fairness and equability? 

Jesus walked this earth to remind the Jews—and by extension us—that there is nothing more worthy than compassion, which is the only transformative agency we can participate in with God. I do not sit in judgment over the President of the House of Deputies—goodness knows what decision I would have made in her place.  And I credit her with admitting that she may not have made the best decision in the way she handled the situation.  She apologized to the deputation from Honduras and told the House where to find the dissent on-line.  But I wonder, had she to do it all over again, would she stick to the rules, or allow for their suspension?

Jesus drew the bottom line: People matter more than law, compassion more than reasonableness.  I grow weary of dissent and division, but I am more and more aware that weariness is no excuse and legalism cannot be acceptable, even in the governance of our church, if we truly desire to be part of the Jesus movement.  To be part of that movement, sometimes and maybe even most of the time, we’ll just have to suspend the rules.