Ash Wednesday, Valentine's Day & Burying a Dog

St. Valentine’s Day Co-mingled with Lent

Love, seeking humility, grief, burying a dog

 

         It was late the 13^th of February.  I’d had eye surgery.  Everything seems to have gone well but I was restricted in the weight I am to pick up, even in bending over.  Exertion leading to a rise in blood pressure can damage a healing eye after surgery.  So through the week until my return visit to the physician I am off work.  I had gone to church for it was Ash Wednesday.  I came home.  A neighbor’s dog barked at me.  It was different the way he barked but I didn’t pay much attention.  I didn’t see my dog.  It was dark by the time I got home.  He was resting.  He is pretty much a senior citizen these days.  He sleeps a lot, occasionally barks at a cat, or joins a chorus of dogs barking at whatever the first dog barked at, no one really knows but a score of dogs carry on being heard and responding to dogs they hear that no human ear can hear, so probably a city of a half million people and near as many dogs are there as dogs begin barking from the north to the south to the east and to the west until the whole metropolitan area hears dogs barking.  No dog is an island unto himself even when fenced in and unable to join the greater pack.

It is a different occurrence to have the beginning of Lent one day and Valentine’s Day the next.  One day we are to begin our vigil, our thirst for righteousness felt in acknowledging that we are poor in spirit whether we know it or feel it or not, and to be encouraged to know that blessed are those who mourn.  We are to seek meekness, for surely in such attitudes is the way one truly discovers an answer to their hunger and thirst for righteousness.  In the Lenten season we go out into the wilderness to pray, to acknowledge our sins, to consider how we have wounded and hurt others so that we might make our way right with them, and we seek Him who is not far away because He came into this world to seek us long before we gave a care to seek after him.  That is I guess what Lent is about.  If Judy Collins had kept Lent or sung about it she would have said, “I’ve looked at Lent from both sides now; from sacrifice and from seeking and it’s Lent’s illusions I recall I don’t really know Lent at all.”  I haven’t ever done Lent that well.  When it is finished I haven’t given the time in prayer, in grieving my sin, in finding the way of penitence near enough, but I suppose not all is a loss.  I finish Lent knowing I need a Savior whose cross I see blotted out behind a veil shrouded in deep black on Good Friday.  Thank God for the unseen cross behind Good Friday’s veil, it is alone the reason I will rejoice on Easter Sunday.  I know that hidden cross is there even if the whole earth is covered in utter darkness for that afternoon -- whether the sun shines or the heavens pour rain.

Lent has begun with Ash Wednesday on the 13^th of February.  I turn to Facebook and there is a humorous set of Puritan Valentine Day Cards.  Ah yes, this is the 13^th, tomorrow therefore is February the 14^th, St. Valentine’s Day.  It is a humorous selection playing on the dour reputation of the Puritans.  One says; something like “When I am around you, you make my heart almost dance, and dancing is forbidden.”  Another announces love in a sort of off-hand way by saying “When I am around you, I think all kinds of impure thoughts and I am ashamed.”  So we smile I suspect not so much at the Puritans of nearly five hundred years ago, but at our own crazy sometimes messed up souls that sometimes cannot distinguish between that which is simple humanity, or probably sin, or worst of all zeal gone astray.

Recently I put my profile on a web site for Christian singles – a site where you realize that most of the ladies aren’t for you, but that is alright most figure you aren’t for them.  In the end, and maybe this will be a means to the end God is the one who blesses the best unions, who brings them together, who is at the altar waiting for them to come before him, who blesses them and stays with them but never in a lurking way until the day he calls one of them home.  I suppose for me it has been something of a learning experience regarding myself and not just the persons out there.  I haven’t given seeking a mate much time or effort for twenty-five or thirty years.  I would like to say that I didn’t make much effort because I was content in those years.  But I suspect the closer adjective to describe my laxity in looking would be that I was pretty much calloused in those years.  If sometimes we fear being alone sometimes we simply fear feeling a bit of suffering.  So we take to being alone not so much as a calling but more as a path of escape.  When someone takes up something after leaving it off for a long time, he forgets how much things have changed.  He tries to pick up where he left.  I hadn’t looked much for twenty-five years, made some feeble attempts, and worried sometimes as much that a gal I asked out might say yes as she might say no.  If she said no then I would feel a bit down but part of me was relieved.  A strange way to be, I cannot explain.  Twenty-five years ago when I did want to look, well thirty year old women looked just right.  Twenty-five years later I tried picking up where I left off and found that my ideals of the woman to choose hadn’t really changed.  But generally men my age and thirty year olds aren’t a very good idea, not for the long haul.

Still I saw a nice profile of a woman around thirty, a conservative Episcopalian who gave a pretty decent perspective on a Christian life and showed a nice sense of humor.  She described herself as one who loved her churches high and her bars low.  Now that is an Episcopalian’s Episcopalian if there ever was one.  I wrote her a letter just to wish her well in her search and she sent a nice note in reply.  Maybe we’ll become friends.  That would be nice.

Afterwards I thought of logging back into Facebook.  This time my thoughts were focused on Valentine’s Day having been reminded that the fourteenth would start at midnight.  It is not often that Ash Wednesday morphs into Valentine’s Day.  I picked a couple of songs to post on Facebook.  The first song I selected was one my sister loved back around 1967 by the Association called Cherish.  The second song was a sort of classical folk song full of romance about a whistling gypsy rover who came over the hill and down into the valley.  It was that sort of classical folk song that echoed the lesson of how the husband/wife relationship reflects the love of Ephesians 5 where our Lord sought out his bride and made her his forevermore.   The whistling gypsy whistled until he found a lady who followed after him.  She left everything; her own lover, her father’s castle, all to follow the whistling gypsy rover.  Her father found his fastest steed and looked all over the valley for his daughter and the whistling gypsy rover.  He found them near a river where there was wine and food and dancing.  Here was the lady and the whistling gypsy rover.  She told her father the truth that this was no gypsy rover but the lord of these lands all over, and she would stay with him to the day she died.  Thus ended the folk tune.  Surely a picture I think of him upon whom we looked and esteemed him not, some sort of wandering whistling gypsy rover. But as he whistled and as he spoke his fair lady, the church for whom he died in agony, followed after him and left all lovers and all family for this wandering whistling gypsy rover.  He had come down from the great hills above and wandered into our valley to take a bride.  We thought him of no account but these were his lands all over.

I stayed up sort of late and went to the door, by now it was surely the fourteenth.  I whistled a bit a little of a song.  That was usually enough for my old dog to come making his way.  Lately he hadn’t been moving as quickly as he did in earlier years.  I waited but he did not come.  I thought for a moment that he had probably dug a way out and went visiting the neighborhood.  I called him again.  I got the flashlight out and went to find a hole dug under the fence.  I didn’t notice one and then saw him on the ground still.  I saw his eyes opened but not even a dog spirit or soul at home.  It is times like these that one wonders if dogs are just animals without spirits.  Some like to declare one truth based on the silence of Scriptures and others another truth all created out of thin air and imagination.  Perhaps there is a heaven for dogs, I won’t say or perhaps dogs have never had eternity placed upon their souls.  Their lives are meant to be enjoyed for the now and since eternity is not placed on their hearts they accept their end when the time comes.  But who knows if animal spirits descend while human spirits ascend at death, this is something the Psalmist asked somewhere I recall.  But now the strange bark my neighbor’s dog made when he saw me earlier perhaps it all made sense.  They had an understanding of one another from across the fence.  Maybe the neighbor’s dog was telling me in his own way of why I didn’t see my dog when I had come home earlier after having the ashes put on my head.

Suddenly my world seemed a lot lonelier on Valentine’s Day than ever I had expected it to be this year.  I tried to go to bed, but didn’t sleep much.  I didn’t try to weep but the tears came.  Did he die of natural causes?  I am not really so sure.  I saw this bone.  It looked like one I gave him a few weeks ago, but usually bones don’t keep near this dog a few weeks.  I didn’t want to think about it, perhaps someone thought he had barked too much, or didn’t like a ferocious pit bulldog in the neighborhood, when in reality he wasn’t much different from the lovable one that America fell in love with in the Little Rascals.  In those days pit bull terriers were the loving pet needed by every active little boy, now there are no end of newspaper stories announcing how one went wild, but I wonder how often the one that went wild had a kind gentle owner who just enjoyed a little rambunctious critter with personality galore.  But maybe the bone was really just a coincidence.  He had been moving slower in these last days.  At night he snored heavily.  Maybe his heart gave out.  I had treated him twice for heart worm.  His master had on occasion forgotten his medicine when working long hours and one month just sort of melted into the next without being noticed.  Sometimes it took a couple of weeks before the calendar month got changed.  Bachelors forget about time, dogs don’t care about it, but worms spread by mosquitoes count on it.  Anyway, he was gone.  He had been a good companion.

Perhaps all of this will make this to be a more deeply moving Lenten season than any before it.  I know I will grieve this year for the dog that left me on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day during the first day of Lent, otherwise known as Ash Wednesday.  I would dig him a hole but I am not supposed to do much physical work this week.  So I will call upon a friend, and probably my priest who is also a friend.  I will ask them to come dig a hole and then I’ll ask them to help me remember a dog by going to McNellie’s (one of the better pubs in our fair city) and we’ll each take our time downing a pint while mourning a space my old companion.  Then I’ll return to Lent.  Maybe that’ll be the only pint I down this Lenten season.  Perhaps the grief today will help me more earnestly to seek a companion for next Valentine’s Day.  Perhaps also the grieving for a four-legged dog will be turned into a seeking after the eternal God, whom I believe I know as an acquaintance but I could know him far more.  So maybe today my prayers to grow in grace have been answered a bit, hard as the circumstances do now seem.  When you take home a dog you know the day will come when one of you will mourn, for a dog’s life is generally short and we always make the bet that we’ll live long enough to bury the pooch.  But when the tables have been turned well the story of good ole Lassie of Gray-friars comes to mind.  She followed her shepherd master to his burial site in Edinburgh’s famous cemetery.  The city tried in vain to arrest her until the whole city knew the cause.  She came every day to lay vigil over her master’s grave.  The city ordinance was clear a dog was to be impounded who had no master, but a way was found for Lassie of Gray-friars to roam and be the friend of the city when she was honored for her reverence to her old master and given the keys to Edinburgh.  That is how the story goes.

I guess that is one of the great lessons of Valentine’s Day; whether for those in love or looking for love.  The day one falls in love it is to be understood that a day will come when one must depart first from this earth or into this earth.  Then there will come that test which grades all great loves.  As one’s heart is torn and broken, with tears flowing, will the grieving soul of truth say with a Scotsman who understood it all, “Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”  Or as one standing on the mountain before coming down to the valley said, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”  My dog’s final lesson to me is that grief is a small price to pay for a journey of shared love in this life of ours.

I will let the young lady know the words I write this day, not for each other, but maybe for each of us this will be a lesson on keeping our focus as we would seek love.  I used to think I wasn’t sure it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  Now I am sure that a good love is something worth so much and more; even if a day will come when someone can only mutter in grief “tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”  This is a thought I will ponder this Lenten season until on Good Friday I look upon a cross covered in the darkness of a black veil.  Then I will know that on Good Friday there is the 22^nd Psalm, on the next day there will be the 88^th Psalm, and then on Easter Sunday glory will fill the skies.  I will then understand a bit more that He is love.