Bounder reminded us, a couple of days ago, that we need to get serious again about blog entries. He did it unknowingly, the way our animals usually speak to us about the love of God.
It was the first of the month: time for his heartworm medication. We took out one of the fudgelike rectangles containing the agent that prevents parasites from tunneling into his heart and insidiously killing him. He was sprawled on the living room floor in one of his accustomed spots, waiting for something to happen, when he heard the words "Bounder! Treat!" He leapt up, tail waving, eyes fixed expectantly on us, sat when told to, and delightedly scarfed down the morsel. He immediately looked for another but accepted "That's all" and went back to waiting for the next thing to happen.
Two minutes earlier, he had no idea he would get a treat. He had no opportunity to anticipate and enjoy the anticipation, nor to get impatient or exaggerate to himself how good it would be. He accepted it joyfully and unquestioningly. Neither did Bounder have any idea of the reason for the "treat." To him, it was just an unexpected blessing. He has no idea that its transitory goodness is just a side benefit: its real purpose is to keep him well.
Nor does he understand the same purpose behind the unexpectedly disagreeable times when we take him to the vet or get his nails clipped. He experiences subjectively - joy or sorrow - what we, objectively, know to be all parts of the same love and care for him.
How many times, Lord, do you surprise us the same way? So many moments of unexpected pleasure that we are hardly aware of them. We are much more aware when events unexpectedly inconvenience, annoy, or pain us. Yet we must believe that both types of surprise are evidences of Your love for us. Help us accept both in the same unquestioning spirit with which our animals put their trust in us - for You are so much more worthy of that trust.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Being Ruled Without Rules
Tonight, in the Orthodox Church, is the eve of the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos - the same date, August 15, as what Roman Catholics call the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Our sister church in this city is a Greek church, Assumption, and this is their patronal feast, so we joined them tonight for the pre-feast Lamentations service. Lamentations is a beautiful service, a sort of compression of the final service on Holy Friday (Good Friday), just as the past two weeks, a period of fasting, have been a sort of compressed Lent.
Among the several priests who visited and helped serve was Fr. Ted Trifon, pastor of Sts Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa. Fr. Ted delivered a homily after the service that enlightened even lifelong Orthodox in the congregation, and gave us food for thought concerning obedience and the best way to achieve it.
For readers who are not Orthodox, we probably should explain the Orthodox belief about the end of the life of the Virgin Mary, Jesus' mother, whom we call the Theotokos (Greek for God-bearer, with "bearer" in the sense of bearing a child). From the beginning, the church has taught that Mary died in the house where she had long lived with the Apostle John; that she was buried quickly according to Jewish custom, with most of the apostles present; that the apostle Thomas arrived three days after the burial and asked to see her body so he might venerate it; that when the tomb was opened, the Theotokos' body was gone, showing that her son Jesus had taken her bodily to heaven in much the same way that his body had been resurrected after the crucifixion and ascended to heaven 40 days later.
Roman Catholic belief is fairly similar; there are only two differences that matter for the sake of this entry. One is that Romans tend to believe Mary was taken to heaven alive, without dying first (so they have no celebration of "Dormition," which means falling asleep in the Lord). The other difference is that in their church, the Assumption of Mary is a dogma - while the Orthodox church has never adopted it as dogma, but regards it as a "theological opinion." (We're going to use the term "opinion" rather than the formal Greek term "theologoumenon," partly because the latter is hard to spell or even say quickly, and partly because theologoumenon often means subjects about which Christians can have valid disagreements - and as you'll see, Fr. Ted's remarks about Assumption as an opinion took the complete opposite approach.)
According to Fr. Ted, the Orthodox church creates "dogmas" only when it has to, in order to rebut heresies. When the entire church has always broadly accepted a belief, the church sees no need for a formal dogma but allows the belief to remain a "theological opinion." So in a sense, rather than being "lower" than dogmas, Orthodox theological opinions of this kind would be "higher" than dogmas - because they have never been questioned, but are just a matter of "common sense," as Fr. Ted put it. ("God took Elijah to Heaven in a fiery chariot, and he was only a great prophet," Fr. Ted said. "Wouldn't He do at least as much for His mother, the person from whom he received a human body?")
This got us thinking about an important difference between East and West - and maybe a connection with our thoughts about spirituality and living with dogs. (No, we're not going to make any puns about "dog" and "dogma," much as ordinarily we might like to.) In the Eastern church, while there are certainly rules and hierarchies, there is nothing like the Western insistence on defining, classifying, organizing, and over-analyzing everything, commonly parodied by the question, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
The Roman Catholic dogma of the Assumption is a good example. According to the research we've done, the Roman church accepted Mary's bodily Assumption fully as long ago as the Orthodox have - since at least the fourth century. In the 18th century, Pope Benedict XIV declared it a "probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous," (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm). Yet in 1950, Pope Pius XII made the Assumption of the Virgin a dogma in a Bull issued under his power of infallibility (also a relatively recent dogma of the Roman church, but that's another story). Apparently it wasn't enough that the belief had been accepted for almost 2,000 years, and that denying the Assumption was impious and blasphemous - the Western church still felt the Assumption needed the validation of being stated as a "dogma."
Perhaps this example helps explain why Orthodoxy, while producing some of history's greatest theologians, has always been a little cautious about theology. Understanding the ways of God, or thinking we do (how much can we really understand?), takes second place to living the ways of God. "When you pray, don't theologize," an Orthodox bishop told a BBC reporter during an interview on Orthodoxy shortly before the collapse of Communism. The more rules people are expected to follow, the more incapable people are of acting without rules, and the more the rules may become God.
The connection with dog training? (Here it comes, at the end of a very long entry.) The really well-trained and socialized dog needs the fewest commands. One of the first rules we learned in our dog-training class was, "Never repeat a command." Say the command, then create a situation where the dog knows what you want through body position, movement, habit, to which the words are just a reminder. Ultimately, work toward situations where what you want the dog to do is what the dog wants to do. If dog and man are to live in harmony, both have to do it without continually consulting a rule book - but instead, knowing what right behavior is, and doing it through mutual agreement. Where our relationship with Bounder is working the best, he knows what he's supposed to do, or not do, and behaves accordingly without needing to be told.
Is it a stretch to say that the church, for 2,000 years, has worked the same way? She has avoided multiplying dogmas because God is happiest when believers just accept God's truths as "common sense." If challenges arise, if believers seriously differ, then the church clarifies the command (yanks on the leash?). But it is far preferable for believers to share the Church's beliefs through general acceptance, custom, usage, shared practice - in harmony with God, as we seek to be in harmony with our animals.
Among the several priests who visited and helped serve was Fr. Ted Trifon, pastor of Sts Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa. Fr. Ted delivered a homily after the service that enlightened even lifelong Orthodox in the congregation, and gave us food for thought concerning obedience and the best way to achieve it.
For readers who are not Orthodox, we probably should explain the Orthodox belief about the end of the life of the Virgin Mary, Jesus' mother, whom we call the Theotokos (Greek for God-bearer, with "bearer" in the sense of bearing a child). From the beginning, the church has taught that Mary died in the house where she had long lived with the Apostle John; that she was buried quickly according to Jewish custom, with most of the apostles present; that the apostle Thomas arrived three days after the burial and asked to see her body so he might venerate it; that when the tomb was opened, the Theotokos' body was gone, showing that her son Jesus had taken her bodily to heaven in much the same way that his body had been resurrected after the crucifixion and ascended to heaven 40 days later.
Roman Catholic belief is fairly similar; there are only two differences that matter for the sake of this entry. One is that Romans tend to believe Mary was taken to heaven alive, without dying first (so they have no celebration of "Dormition," which means falling asleep in the Lord). The other difference is that in their church, the Assumption of Mary is a dogma - while the Orthodox church has never adopted it as dogma, but regards it as a "theological opinion." (We're going to use the term "opinion" rather than the formal Greek term "theologoumenon," partly because the latter is hard to spell or even say quickly, and partly because theologoumenon often means subjects about which Christians can have valid disagreements - and as you'll see, Fr. Ted's remarks about Assumption as an opinion took the complete opposite approach.)
According to Fr. Ted, the Orthodox church creates "dogmas" only when it has to, in order to rebut heresies. When the entire church has always broadly accepted a belief, the church sees no need for a formal dogma but allows the belief to remain a "theological opinion." So in a sense, rather than being "lower" than dogmas, Orthodox theological opinions of this kind would be "higher" than dogmas - because they have never been questioned, but are just a matter of "common sense," as Fr. Ted put it. ("God took Elijah to Heaven in a fiery chariot, and he was only a great prophet," Fr. Ted said. "Wouldn't He do at least as much for His mother, the person from whom he received a human body?")
This got us thinking about an important difference between East and West - and maybe a connection with our thoughts about spirituality and living with dogs. (No, we're not going to make any puns about "dog" and "dogma," much as ordinarily we might like to.) In the Eastern church, while there are certainly rules and hierarchies, there is nothing like the Western insistence on defining, classifying, organizing, and over-analyzing everything, commonly parodied by the question, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
The Roman Catholic dogma of the Assumption is a good example. According to the research we've done, the Roman church accepted Mary's bodily Assumption fully as long ago as the Orthodox have - since at least the fourth century. In the 18th century, Pope Benedict XIV declared it a "probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous," (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm). Yet in 1950, Pope Pius XII made the Assumption of the Virgin a dogma in a Bull issued under his power of infallibility (also a relatively recent dogma of the Roman church, but that's another story). Apparently it wasn't enough that the belief had been accepted for almost 2,000 years, and that denying the Assumption was impious and blasphemous - the Western church still felt the Assumption needed the validation of being stated as a "dogma."
Perhaps this example helps explain why Orthodoxy, while producing some of history's greatest theologians, has always been a little cautious about theology. Understanding the ways of God, or thinking we do (how much can we really understand?), takes second place to living the ways of God. "When you pray, don't theologize," an Orthodox bishop told a BBC reporter during an interview on Orthodoxy shortly before the collapse of Communism. The more rules people are expected to follow, the more incapable people are of acting without rules, and the more the rules may become God.
The connection with dog training? (Here it comes, at the end of a very long entry.) The really well-trained and socialized dog needs the fewest commands. One of the first rules we learned in our dog-training class was, "Never repeat a command." Say the command, then create a situation where the dog knows what you want through body position, movement, habit, to which the words are just a reminder. Ultimately, work toward situations where what you want the dog to do is what the dog wants to do. If dog and man are to live in harmony, both have to do it without continually consulting a rule book - but instead, knowing what right behavior is, and doing it through mutual agreement. Where our relationship with Bounder is working the best, he knows what he's supposed to do, or not do, and behaves accordingly without needing to be told.
Is it a stretch to say that the church, for 2,000 years, has worked the same way? She has avoided multiplying dogmas because God is happiest when believers just accept God's truths as "common sense." If challenges arise, if believers seriously differ, then the church clarifies the command (yanks on the leash?). But it is far preferable for believers to share the Church's beliefs through general acceptance, custom, usage, shared practice - in harmony with God, as we seek to be in harmony with our animals.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
TV program on the peculiar status of dogs
If you believe, as we do, that God loves us and gives us a special role in His creation, it's hard to believe that dogs aren't part of His plan for us. This Wednesday, August 15, the National Geographic Channel presents a program that may support that belief:"The Science of Dogs."
While not, we expect, explicitly mentioning God, the program does document facts we've marveled at for years. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal review, dogs are:
While not, we expect, explicitly mentioning God, the program does document facts we've marveled at for years. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal review, dogs are:
...a species with more variety...than any other animal on earth. Think about it....cows may be bred to produce more milk, or grow larger, but they still look like cows. Dogs, however, have been stretched, shrunken, and otherwise manipulated into about 400 distinct breeds....they are almost identical genetically to their lupine ancestors...Even so, 80% of the dog breeds...did not exist as recently as 130 years ago....the [new breed called] Dogo Argentino...has been created...to hunt crop-destroying wild boars ferociously, but to frolic gently with children...A scientist in Russia has fabricated a new animal...that yearns only to sniff for explosives....all this fine tuning...is possible because of unique characteristics of dog DNA. That's all explained here, along with experiments showing what may be the most pronounced difference between wolves and dogs - which is the latter's instinctive view of humans as partners.Where did this "instinctive view of humans as partners" come from? If it came from selective breeding, as an evolutionist would insist, the trait still has to have existed in wolves to begin with. Why would any wolves have had such a trait? From what we've read about the (speculative) history of dogs, the first dogs were wolves that came into primitive Man's camps to help defend against predators or clean up the garbage, or perhaps both. It was a relationship of mutual benefit from the beginning. Even today, wolves sometimes live with people in a manner not too different from domestic dogs. We don't believe there's any other wild animal that has that sort of automatic connection to humans (certainly not cats, as we'll discuss in future entries). Why is this? And whence comes it, if not from God?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Starting Out
We're starting this blog to try out some ideas we've discussed between ourselves for a couple of years. We think we see connections between two things that, at first glance, seem very different: living with dogs and living the Christian life. We're hoping to develop these ideas by subjecting them to two severe tests. One, seeing how they look in writing (who was it that said, "I never know what I think about something until I write it down?"); two, by getting reactions from others (if anyone pays any attention anymore to one blog among the 50 million or so out there).
This idea may seem totally wacky to others. To tell the truth, seeing it put down in black and white, it looks a little odd to us. Maybe it would look better if it were expressed more abstractly or philosophically - and in fact, we think there's more nuance to the idea than the way we've initially stated it. But to get started, we'll put it down as simply as possible and go from there. And to keep this initial post brief, we'll just explain how we got the idea.
We're a couple of fairly recent converts to Orthodox Christianity - sometimes called "Eastern Orthodox." Most people think "Greek Orthodox" when we say "Orthodox" (if they don't assume we're Jewish) - and the Greeks are indeed Orthodox, but so are a lot of other peoples around the world. We're Antiochian Orthodox, which is originally Arab, though we ourselves - like the majority of Antiochian Orthodox in America - are non-Arab converts. Whatever the ethnic flavor, Orthodoxy involves a regular ascetic practice which requires, among other things, fasting from rich foods, including meat and dairy, on certain days and during certain periods of the year. The idea is that if we learn to control our human tendency toward gluttony, we can apply that self control to the bigger challenges - like lust, envy, anger, and so on.
We also own a dog - a black Lab mix who is finally growing out of puppyhood after three years. When we first got Bounder, we took him to obedience classes as an alternative to just watching the house be destroyed. Our pup came out of the classes much improved. One of the key things we taught him was "leave it." It's a simple command that trains the dog not to snap up something that falls in front of his nose, but to restrain himself until his owner says "OK," which tells him it's OK to scarf up the tidbit. Eventually, the dog learns enough self-control that he will "leave it" indefinitely - and doesn't need to be rewarded by finally getting the treat after all. Obedience, at that point, is reward enough.
Perhaps you see where this is going. One day, one of us walked through the kitchen in his office on a fast day and was tempted by a platter of rich snacks someone had put out. He looked at the goodie and said to himself "Leave it!" as he would have said it to Bounder. Immediately the craving was quenched - at least long enough to walk briskly past the table and leave the temptation behind. We started to think: is it possible there's a connection here? Just as we work with the dog to help him learn discipline, does God want to work with us in a similar way? Dogs aren't people, of course, and spirituality is far more than just following rules or orders - but all the same, are there things we can learn from the comparison?
This entry is long enough already, so we'll just answer that question with - "we will see" - probably the only answer we have right now.
This idea may seem totally wacky to others. To tell the truth, seeing it put down in black and white, it looks a little odd to us. Maybe it would look better if it were expressed more abstractly or philosophically - and in fact, we think there's more nuance to the idea than the way we've initially stated it. But to get started, we'll put it down as simply as possible and go from there. And to keep this initial post brief, we'll just explain how we got the idea.
We're a couple of fairly recent converts to Orthodox Christianity - sometimes called "Eastern Orthodox." Most people think "Greek Orthodox" when we say "Orthodox" (if they don't assume we're Jewish) - and the Greeks are indeed Orthodox, but so are a lot of other peoples around the world. We're Antiochian Orthodox, which is originally Arab, though we ourselves - like the majority of Antiochian Orthodox in America - are non-Arab converts. Whatever the ethnic flavor, Orthodoxy involves a regular ascetic practice which requires, among other things, fasting from rich foods, including meat and dairy, on certain days and during certain periods of the year. The idea is that if we learn to control our human tendency toward gluttony, we can apply that self control to the bigger challenges - like lust, envy, anger, and so on.
We also own a dog - a black Lab mix who is finally growing out of puppyhood after three years. When we first got Bounder, we took him to obedience classes as an alternative to just watching the house be destroyed. Our pup came out of the classes much improved. One of the key things we taught him was "leave it." It's a simple command that trains the dog not to snap up something that falls in front of his nose, but to restrain himself until his owner says "OK," which tells him it's OK to scarf up the tidbit. Eventually, the dog learns enough self-control that he will "leave it" indefinitely - and doesn't need to be rewarded by finally getting the treat after all. Obedience, at that point, is reward enough.
Perhaps you see where this is going. One day, one of us walked through the kitchen in his office on a fast day and was tempted by a platter of rich snacks someone had put out. He looked at the goodie and said to himself "Leave it!" as he would have said it to Bounder. Immediately the craving was quenched - at least long enough to walk briskly past the table and leave the temptation behind. We started to think: is it possible there's a connection here? Just as we work with the dog to help him learn discipline, does God want to work with us in a similar way? Dogs aren't people, of course, and spirituality is far more than just following rules or orders - but all the same, are there things we can learn from the comparison?
This entry is long enough already, so we'll just answer that question with - "we will see" - probably the only answer we have right now.
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