Tag Archives: self-absorption

A Dog Named Buddy

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“A single act of love makes the soul return to life.”  –St. Maximilian KolbeBuddy

Maybe it’s the fact that I am trying to kick a diet coke habit.  Perhaps it’s because my fridge repair guy has cancelled for the 2nd time.  I’m not entirely sure the reason, but I can say for certain that I wasn’t in any jeopardy of being accused of excessive holiness this morning.

I was focused on a long list of priorities to manage and errands to run.  On the top of my pile are multiple sets of some ridiculous forms the kid’s school has been pestering me for…..FOREVER.

I wanted to shout, “My kids haven’t changed doctors, they still aren’t allergic to anything, we haven’t moved, and our cell phone numbers remain the same.  Yes, you can give my kid a Tylenol if he has a headache.   We still don’t care which number you’re going to use on the phone tree that has never been used in my last 10 years at this school… and last but not least….our language preference is still ENGLISH!  Why can’t we just click a box that says SAME AS LAST YEAR?!”

These are the things that drive me crazy.  Between them and the incessantly barking neighbor dogs, it was just getting to me.  Clearly, I thought, I have lost it.  I need to go get sweaty and work off the anger management problem that seems to be lathering up.

As I drove my blue minivan towards the gym, I noticed the car ahead of me had pulled to the side of the road and stopped.  There she was– an anguished, gray-haired hysterical woman– in the middle of the street.  Inching closer, I could hear her crying and see that there was a dog lying motionless at her feet.  She was inconsolable.  Oh gosh.

The traffic began to backup on the busy road, but everyone gave her respectful space.  It was truly a poignant scene, which made my heart hurt and brought me out of myself.  Making my way out of the area after a few minutes,  I found myself asking God to bring this stranger peace of heart.  It was hard to watch her pain, as she was so raw with emotion, and it remains with me still.

That said, I think it’s worth confessing that I, myself, am not really a dog fan (as you may have inferred in the earlier paragraph).  I have never quite connected with the animal lovers of the world.  I am fully aware of the obvious flaw in character that I am revealing when I share this, by the way.  That said, a friend who knows this about me smiled a bit at my sugary sentimentality over the woman and her lost canine companion from this morning.  She explained to me that a good dog loves you when no one else does, is always happy to see you and she said, “sometimes, nothing feels better than being loved even when you don’t deserve it.”

LIGHT BULB MOMENT.

God loves me even when I don’t feel lovely.  He loves me when I feel abandoned and ignored.  Always.  No matter what.

God uses dogs too?  They are instruments of His love.  Just like amazing girlfriends, loving spouses, freckle-faced kids, beautiful sunsets, and knockout roses.

Who knew?

Notice how when you start remembering to love others, think of them before yourself, you come out of yourself and suddenly what seemed so bothersome is much less noticeable?  When I began to earnestly pray for Ruth and her dog Buddy this morning, I forgot all about my lack of ice cubes and my stack of forms.

Here’s a little scriptural wisdom I could probably use to have tattooed to my arm.

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8

I’m going to work on it.  It’s that whole concept of thinking more about loving the next guy first, before myself, that gives me fits.  Sometimes I wonder if I am hopeless.  Pretty sure, for example that I need a ladle full of extra grace to overcome the incessantly barking dogs thing.

God did point out to me today that dogs can rather beautifully serve His purpose.  It’s funny how loud he yells sometimes, so, I’ll try.

What does He yell at you about?

The Great State of Arizona

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Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona, AZ

George Weigel, a Roman Catholic theologian and author, has written several extraordinary books.  One of these marvelous works is titled “Letters to a Young Catholic.”  In it, Weigel covers what it means to live a faith filled life for those of us who are curious, searching, or even doubtful.  His account is remarkably lucid, and much of what he said resonates, leaving me with a distinct sense of gratefulness for my faith tradition, and hopefulness for the future.  I recommend the book heartily to all.

Having just returned from a rather spectacular long weekend with my family in Arizona, I find that Letter 12 of this book rings particularly true.  The title of this particular letter is “Chartres Cathedral, France—What Beauty Teaches Us.”  The point that Weigel makes here while taking the reader on a tour of a place he cites as one of the most striking that exists is that beauty is a powerful antidote to self-absorption.  Like Weigel upon visiting Chartres, there is for me something overwhelming and ethereal about the “Red Rock” area of Arizona that it renders me speechless.  Like him, I had the sense as I spied for the second time the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona that I was praying without words simply being present.  The chapel was created by artist and sculptor, Marguerite Brunswig Staude.  She imagined it as “a monument to faith, a spiritual fortress so charged with God, that it spurs man’s spirit Godward!”

Oh, how she succeeded.

Beautiful places, in particular, draw me out of myself.  Sky so blue there isn’t a bright enough crayon to capture it, surrounded by imposing red thousand foot high rock walls all around me, well, they help me realize that the master sculptor has created something so marvelous I simply could never grasp it.  There’s no way to tire of this kind of magnificence.  My 8 yr old son called it “crazy”.  My 15 year old said “I think I took 50 pictures here, Mom.”  My 12 year old simply sat with his jaw open the entire time we were in the Oak Creek Canyon area.  Tom had me ask a stranger to get a photograph of the five of us in the midst of it all, and then, after a round of golf on a mountainside course with our kids he said, “I want to stay another day.”  Says Weigel,  “Beauty is something that even the most skeptical moderns can know.  People know that they know what’s beautiful.”

All of this and experiences like these, of course, are God’s grace at work in my life and yours.

When I was a girl, my parish school was teaming with the smiles of Franciscan sisters.  It seems truly ironic now how I thought they were the loveliest people with the most unfortunate and misguided beauty sensibilities.  I wondered, quite frankly, who chose the brown? The irony is that I remember too walks outside this time of the year with Sister Julie Marie and my entire class at St. Lawrence.  She would point out the many old trees lining the side streets near our school which were so brilliantly glowing red, orange and yellow.  She didn’t have to tell us how beautiful they were, we couldn’t miss them.  That would be like forgetting to notice the sunshine.  When we arrived back in our classroom, she would always say, “God is beauty, huh?”  Turns out those gals in brown knew everything about beauty.

In Weigel’s book, he reminds us of St. Augustine, who famously takes himself to task for taking so long to confront his doubts and conform his life to Christ.  He “exults in his surrender to the God who is beauty itself” pens Weigel.

Late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved thee!  You were within, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unlovliness I plunged into lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance over me; I drew in my breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your embrace. –St. Augustine

If every day was a vacation day spent under the blue skies and sunshine near Phoenix, surrounded by smiling children and a peaceful husband, happily disconnected from his laptop………….well perhaps I would not feel as grateful for the lesson, or the need to recall it later.  Maybe then beauty would simply be part of me.

Perhaps then, I wouldn’t need the Chapel of the Holy Cross, or Slide Rock State Park, or fall trees filled with bright leaves, or stained glass windows glowing in the sunshine, or Hail Holy Queen played by skillful hands on an old church organ, or sunset over lake Michigan.

I’m not sure about you, but this human soul has a knack for self-absorption, for getting lost in the everyday.  There are countless antidotes, but since I even like my cough medicine to be cherry flavored, it won’t surprise anyone who knows me to learn the antidote I prefer is the one easiest to swallow.  The next time I am lost in “Shellyville”–self-assertion, self-absorbed world with sentences that all begin “I am”– will someone please remind me to get out my photo album from the October break trip to Arizona?  That should remind me who I am—and who God is.

“Like Augustine, we burn for the embrace of the Beauty that is always the same and always new.  That burning, which God himself has built into us, is the beginning of every prayer.”  –George Weigel

AMEN.

P.S.  Did I mention I had a great vacation?  Tom, Nick, Drew, and Zach…………you guys rock my socks off.  Oh, and God?  Yeah, you really seemed to find your groove artistically when you got busy with the state of Arizona.  Just saying.  Nice work there.  Love you.