By
her mere presence, sleeping at my feet as I write this, our dog Hobbes reminds
me to lighten up after my last post’s earnest struggling with the Book of
Revelation. For me, she truly is one of those “thin places” of Celtic
spirituality through which I glimpse heaven on earth.
And
I repeatedly witness that she does the same for others. When she rides in the
car with me while out running errands, she often elicits a smile from those we
pass. For a moment they transcend their stress and preoccupations and the
traffic and enter a place of joy, good humor, and tenderness, like a child glad
to be given a new stuffed animal. At first I think they are smiling at me, and
then I realize it’s my passenger of the canine persuasion sitting attentively
in the front seat. I don’t mind basking
in the overflow of goodwill she generates.
A
neighbor along our route home after walking in Grant Park has two bumper
stickers on his truck: “I BELIEVE IN DOG,” says one, and “DOG IS MY CO-PILOT”
says the other. And it’s true, I do believe in Hobbes, and she is definitely my
anamchara, or soul friend, also from
Celtic Christianity. She’s a very good listener, puts up with my singing, and
is always looking out for me. In turn, I
take pleasure in her snoring, her big round eyes (alternately wistful, pitiful,
or ecstatic, working her wiles), her sloppy wet ear kisses, and her nosing the
doorknob when it’s time to go out.
That’s
why I was shocked, toward the end of
Revelation, to discover it said of the New Jerusalem come down from
heaven, that “Others must stay outside: dogs, fortune tellers, and the sexually
immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone of false speech and false life”
(22:15). And there was no footnote explaining the reference to dogs in the New
Jerusalem Bible I was reading!
I
immediately thought of what I remember as an old Twilight Zone episode, a story that not long ago found new life on
the internet, about a man who refuses to enter heaven’s gate without his dog,
only to find the true heaven’s gate further down the road and that the gate he
resisted entering was, in fact, “the other place.” The true heaven welcomed man
and dog.
In
her early life, when I was out of town, Hobbes’s favorite dog sitters were both
transgender. One was a Muslim, and I had to be careful scheduling around the
holy month of Ramadan, when he could not be around a dog during daylight hours.
Religion sometimes considers dogs “unclean,” and I wondered if that were the
origin of the taboo in Revelation.
So
I checked the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version. It, too, listed
“dogs” as unwelcome in the New Jerusalem, but this time a footnote clarifies it
meant, “impure, lascivious persons,” though it also references Philippians 3:2,
where dogs referred to those who insisted on circumcision—in other words, those
who were religious purists, the fundamentalists of their time.
Hobbes’s companion, Calvin, who passed on in San Francisco when I served a church there
as an interim pastor, wrote “On Dogs in Scripture” in his book Unleashed: The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog. Calvin noted that dogs were “not positively portrayed in the scriptures
of various religions,” but “associated with depravity, paganism, heresy,
enemies, and the lowest of the low.” Then he pointed out, “Jesus said not to
give us what’s holy, but agreed, at least, that we had a right to eat the
crumbs that fall from our master’s table.” He continued:
This last reference must serve as the can-opener [Canine for hermeneutic, or method of interpretation] to reveal God’s intentions with regard to dogs. Canine prejudice abounded when most religious canons were written. Surely this admittedly fleeting reference to our right to whatever falls from our masters’ tables gives dogs new status in scriptural dogma. Only those who don’t like us would use the other scriptures against us. And, reading scriptures as a whole, it’s clear that God is usually on the side of the underdog, and there’s nothing more ‘under’ than us dogs! (60-61).
Calvin
sat in the back seat of the car when Hobbes joined our family. But he took a
back seat to no one when it came to biblical interpretation.
For more excerpts from Calvin’s book, click here.
Other posts about Hobbes or Calvin:
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© 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for
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