Guard Your Heart. We say Goodbye to Little Dog

Despite the chaos, we resist by being still.

“Nuclear showdown proves Trump’s incompetence. Or, as Walter Kirn put it, ending the world to own Trump,” says Matt Taibbi in his essay, Ending the World to Own Trump on Racket News. “Few outlets attempted to answer what should be the first question after these attacks. How much danger are we in? What is the likelihood of a Russian response in Europe or the United States?” He reports the giddy nature of pundits with regards to Ukraine’s drone attack on Russia’s nuclear triad, an attack that was planned for a year and a half.

We've already been visited by mysterious drones last fall. We are so open here, so lax with domestic security, such a drone attack could happen here anytime. Now anytime I hear an airplane, I look up with a little fear. By the end of the summer, daredevil planes will swoop spraying poison on the fields so the rest of us can eat. A plot to load cargo planes with bombs has already been foiled.

Then there’s AI which apparently can write its own code to shut down a kill switch. And NBC Chicago reported how two Chinese nationals were going to poison our farm fields and livestock with a weaponized fungus developed in Russia. And the sun is throwing off solar flares that could one day shut down the grid. And. And. The fear ratchets up. When will the beloved world full of birds and clover and wild bees be wrecked? By us.

This week I listened too much to all of it and stepped too far away from focusing on what God has to say by reading The Daily Office, short liturgies for morning, noon, evening and night. In All The World’s a Myth, published soon after President Trump was nearly assassinated, Paul Kingsnorth urged us to guard our peace at all costs. He says the Lord spoke to him during prayer saying, “Put the peace of the heart before everything.”

But Dread can be too entrancing, too intoxicating. This week Dread captured me. I earned a walloping nightmare, with my legs stinging as if they’d been jammed with a cattle prod. In the wake of Bruce’s surgery, I have felt bone dog tired, the kind that leaves you just shy of dizzy. At speech therapy, which is supposed to be helping my memory, I couldn’t think of pairs of words after a minute, especially the unrelated ones. The New York Times free Wordle had me completely stumped.

Though now I think maybe those electric shocks might have something to do with the Spirit's touch to my feet, the Spirit's touch to heal and deliver.

I walked out and greeted the red wing blackbirds and grackles which watched from the electric wires. They tossed and argued over who owned a small tree. Corn and soybean plants are rising. Smoke from Manitoba fires settled an ugly haze and pungent smell, that was no campfire gathering for stories. I am often out of breath.

In the Power of One, A Curse, A Blessing, and the Fate of the Earth, Eugene Terekhin reminds us how Adam’s choosing to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil cursed the ground. We don’t have to look far to see evidence of how we’re breaking the earth and seas. A farmer wants to feed the world, so he uses chemicals and genetically modified seeds. Meanwhile the neighbors suffer ill effects from those chemicals. People living next to oil refineries find themselves suffering from assorted cancers, while the rest of us drive cars and heat our homes. A gas pipeline has corroded, so the beautiful Illinois soil is shoved aside with giant machines to lay a new pipe. But that gas warms and cools us when we can't bear the heat or cold outside. Microplastics are infesting the oceans. Our medicines have seeped into the water supply.

But Terekhin offers surprising hope: “Curse cannot override blessing, but blessing can override curse. It all depends on how much salt is in the earth and whether it has retained its saltiness.

“The more truly happy people there are in the world, the saltier this earth becomes. But even a few grains are enough. The earth is blessed on their account. It will not go bad. They are the salt of the earth. Their blessing overrides the curse—one way or another. It overflows and spills over.” He reminds us of Abraham, who prayed for God to spare the cities on the plain, if there were at least ten righteous people. And then there’s Jesus who was anointed with joy above his fellows. “On account of one unhappy man, the earth was cursed. On account of one truly happy man it was restored. One is enough.”

What would happen if we chose to bless the world around us, bless our people, bless our lives, give thanks. What if we chose to love our neighbor. I wonder if my simple, routine walks in our neighborhood, hauling my thoughts back to “Thank you Lord,” are having a good effect on the land itself. I wonder if nodding my head to how very alive the fields and trees and birds are, is spreading blessing. I have never seen this old apple tree look so vibrant, so full of fruit. Our hay field is thick with clover and grass that has come to a head with birds nesting deep.

Richard Beck in Stillness as Resistance spoke to my dread and offered a call to stillness, what I have found when I’m listening to my steps in the grass or gravel. “Being still can be a profound act of resistance. We are surrounded by the crazed, anxious activity of others. Their panic is contagious, their fear infectious. Worse, they will shame you for staying still, denigrating your calm as wickedness and damning you for not ‘doing something’ as the world burns.”

What would happen if we chose to be still?

Oliver Clement says in Transfiguring Time ,“True history culminates in that saved and conscious love that is saintliness. While those who do not join themselves to Christ are scattered, those who make even the least gesture in the name of the Lord have more impact on the destiny of the world than any assembly or army. The saints are the true masters of the world: it cannot be overstated how many times the destiny of the world has hung on the prayers of an unknown saint” (140).

What happens if we pray for hatreds to cease, especially the hatreds between neighbors.

We Say Goodbye to Little Dog

What happens if you’re a little dog’s paradise, a devoted little dog, who hobbled upstairs to lie next to you while you work out your words, and you have to send her off because her body is failing, and you know you will break your husband’s heart and your own? We said goodbye to Little Dog/Dolly-bird/Doupie/Dee Dee on Friday.

She came to us at five, when Booker died. I saw her picture, a little red dog with sad eyes on Facebook. I couldn’t resist. Apparently, an Aussie breeder friend adopted her when both Little Dog's owner and breeder were done with her. I agreed to take her. She was five. (Bruce was still grieving Booker so not too happy with me.) I walked her down the road with treats above her nose and she became my dog though she cowered when I took a pan out of a drawer and when I got dressed. She left the bedroom when I coughed. She barked at Bruce whenever he stood up to go in the kitchen. That stopped when Omalola came. Then it was Bruce she looked to, knowing he would walk her during my favorite TV show. We worked hard to entice her to eat.

What happens if you’re a little dog’s paradise, and you have to send her off because her body is failing?

That night Bruce, Omalola and I walked down the road and were greeted by a Sun Dog. The world has become so full of meaning, perhaps the Creator was sending us a sign, that Little Dog is well and good, with the crew of dogs, cats and horse we’ve sent on ahead. Before she left, I told her I would see her on the other side.

The prayer from Every Moment Holy, reassures, “Lord, we know that the final working of your redemption will be far-reaching, encompassing all things in heaven and on earth, so that no good thing will be lost forever, so that even our sorrow at the loss of Little Dog will somehow, someday, be met and filled, and, in joy be made forever complete. Comfort us in this meantime O Lord, for the ache of these days is real” (213).

The next morning Omalola and I walked out, very slowly. A few neighbors drove by but didn’t stop. I guess that’s not something they do anymore. But when I turned toward home, the grackles and redwing blackbirds lined themselves on the electric wire, like a receiving line.