Of squirrels and steadfast love

Dog joy. That’s the only word for it. When I pull out his harness and clip on the leash, pure unadulterated joy.

Which is remarkable because I pull out the harness and clip on the leash every day. Part of my sabbatical discipline has been the daily dog walk.

And, for T-Bone, it's always new. It doesn’t matter that we take exactly the same route every day, past the same telephone poles that he peed on yesterday. He sniffs each one as if it were brand new, as if it were the first time. It doesn’t matter how often we’ve passed the house with the barking Bichon tied out in the front yard. I may wish that, just once, they’d keep that poor pup inside, but I would swear that it’s the highlight of T-Bone’s day, every day. Every squirrel we meet holds the potential of victory, never mind the leash. Every pine cone is a waiting adventure, every leaf swirling in the wind an invitation and a challenge.

T-Bone and I walk pretty much the same route every day, the same bushes, the same barking dogs, the same people on the street, the same squirrels. But you’d never know that by my dog.

Of course, you might think I’ve missed the kicker here. T-Bone, you might say, is a dog, And it’s just not that hard to be optimistic and positive when you’re a dog. Especially one who lives in sure and certain hope that, sometime around 8am and again at approximately 5pm, your food dish will magically appear filled with kibble. It’s not that hard to turn your face into the wind on purpose when you’re a dog who has been delivered from the jaws of death in a Tennessee shelter and transferred to the kingdom of dog heaven in Lawrenceville where you are loved unconditionally. Even in that moment when you do, and you will, steal the pork chops off the kitchen cupboard. It’s not that hard to be bold and adventurous when it’s never occurred to your doggy brain that your humans don’t have the whole world in their hands.

When you think about it, it should be just that easy for me, too. I’m a child of the God who provides, who saves, who I believe in faith has the whole world in his hands. But the world is a mess. And confidence and optimism and an adventurous spirit are hard to come by.

They found Nick Pratico’s body this week. My heart breaks for his family and his friends, many of whom are kids in our church community who are again struggling to understand why such pain and sorrow afflicts good people whom they love. My heart breaks for the illness and hopelessness that bring any child to such a place. My heart breaks for the dreams and the future that won’t be.

And then there’s the rest of the week.

Our national conversation and civic life have grown more bitter and broken and useless by the day. Our political leaders spent this week tweeting insults at one another while Puerto Ricans die for lack of clean water and electricity. And people who claim the name of Jesus Christ jumped right in with both feet, defending sexual abusers, providing scriptural cover for bigots and anti-Semites, heaping scorn and derision upon those who would exercise their right to disagree. Not gonna lie. I’m a little overwhelmed by it all and my soul is weary.  

The author of the Old Testament book of Lamentations wrote into the darkness and desperation of his time: The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” Lamentations 3:19-24

A big part of my sabbatical discipline has been the daily dog walk. And for T-Bone, no matter how often we do it, it never gets old. I think that, in a doggy sort of way, T-Bone knows instinctively something that I, with my capacity to imagine disaster, too often forget. God has the whole world in his hands. Love never ceases. Mercy never comes to an end.  In the grace of God, life is new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.

T-Bone and I are going for a walk. There will be squirrels.

#metoo

You can’t argue with the wind, shrugged the ferryman, as he posted the “Ferry Not Running” sign. Well, I guess you can, he smiled, but you’re gonna lose.

So Jim and I didn’t go to Iona. The remnants of the hurricane winds which had devastated the Caribbean roared through the North Atlantic, pushing record swells onto the west coast of Scotland, and closed down the ferries that run between Oban and Mull and Iona. For four days in a row. You can’t argue with the wind. No ferries. No Iona.

 

My 12-step friends tell me that one of the keys to the whole and healthy life most of us want is knowing when to argue with the wind and when to go with it, knowing and changing what you can change and knowing and accepting what you can’t. As my Facebook feed fills up with women posting #metoo, I am coming to realize that I have over the years accepted as unchangeable attitudes, biases, and behaviors which can be changed, which have to be changed.

I wanted to get a job, you see, to get ahead, to live into my call. And I was strong and smart. I had people who believed in me. I could handle it. Arguing with the wind seemed a fight I was destined to lose. People can be mean, sometimes vicious, violent, and cruel. Why not just work harder to be better than the abuser and move on?

My 12-step friends tell me that accepting what you can’t change and changing what you can is a big part of living a healthy and whole life. They also tell me that the trick is discerning the difference. I was wrong in acting as if the harassment and abuse I experience(d) was my problem, primarily about me, and something that I had to live with. It’s not. I’ve come to see that. It’s systemic, it’s widespread, it’s extraordinarily damaging and painful. And it can be changed.

So here’s my #metoo.

And my prayers for my sisters—and my brothers.

And my promise to do what I can to change what I can.

Last Tuesday, I hiked the Ballycotton Cliff Walk. To be more accurate, I hiked the Ballycotton Cliff Walk and half of the Ballycotton bird walk too. I didn’t intend to walk nearly 5 miles one way with the necessity to turn around at some point and walk all the way back. But. It was a little hard to tell where one walk ended and the other began. And at the time, it seemed imperative to FINISH the Cliff Walk. 

And the beauty was extraordinary. I grew up in Northern California. The Coastal Highway and Big Sur were beloved next door neighbors. Nearly every summer, my dad would drive the family up the coast to Oregon with plenty of picture stops along the way. It never, ever got old.

Still the beauty of what the Irish call the Wild Atlantic Way is extraordinary. Partly I think because it is so up close, personal, and unspoiled. Miles of glorious cliffs topped by emerald green fields (yes, a cliché but a cliché because it’s true.) Jagged fingers of red sandstone rising out of a sea the exact color of my granddaughter’s eyes. Foaming water below, glorious windswept skies above.

And not a house in sight. Not a luxury apartment. Not a $10 million condo. Not a gated community. Not a golf course, or tennis court, or swimming pool. Not even a handicapped accessible bike/jogging path. In fact, bikes and horses are expressly forbidden. ATV’s are unthinkable. As my mother used to say, it’s shank’s mare, baby, all the way. 

Extraordinary. Otherworldly, really. A land out of time.

And quite unremarked by the residents of this beautiful little village. It is the backdrop of their lives. They are as much a part of the landscape as the gorse on the cliffs. And the landscape is part of them, the crashing waves a heartbeat as real as their own. Not something to be admired and photographed and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over. Simply there.

It’s different for me. Here, far from home, my senses are on high alert. In a land where a rainbow lies around every corner, I don’t want to miss a thing. I smell the peat smoke in the air. I taste the salt on the wind. I feel the ground under my feet, the mist and the sun on my face. 

And I wonder how much of my own life goes unnoticed, unremarked. I wonder how much of the world around me I miss for lack of focus and attention. After one particularly long night in the desert, Jacob exclaimed: God was in this place and I didn’t even know it. How often do I see and not perceive, or hear and not listen or understand? 

Last Tuesday, I hiked the Ballycotton Cliff Walk. It didn’t take much to see there the fingerprints of a loving God. The work is to keep my eyes open when I get home.