Pets as Theophanies

Hobbes on the beach in South Carolina.

Welcome, Pope Francis, to the U.S.A! Click here for posts that mention the pope, including one written by our dog, Hobbes.

I’ve been contemplating the depth of my loss in the death of our beloved golden Labrador retriever mix, Hobbes, this summer. Those who read my earlier posts may tire of hearing about this, but my hope has been in each one to speak to our common experiences, not just of pets, but of grief, loss, and love.

I can see very few stars in our sky over Atlanta. I have no nearby shore to walk and watch the waves rise and fall. Buildings obstruct the horizon in every direction.  There are no mountains to climb in our neighborhood.

Hobbes was my touchstone for nature. Gazing at her I saw the artistry of God. Being with her I also witnessed—in Evelyn Underhill’s words—the “homeliness” of God, God’s everydayness, familiarity, and steadfast presence.

My “congregation” is largely invisible and silent and at a distance: the readers of my blog and of my books. Facebook, e-mails, and letters intermittently give me chances to hear from you.

But Hobbes was my constant companion, particularly needed during times of stress, grief, anxiety, and loneliness. And, at the time of her death, she was the longest intimate relationship I’d had as an adult.

During her walks, she led me beside “green pastures” under the canopy of trees that cover our city, thus “restoring my soul.” If walking with God through the Garden of Eden was denied me, Hobbes was a qualified representative. Wade and I are still taking her longer morning walks.

When Calvin, Hobbes, and I lived in San Francisco, where I served as interim pastor for a little over a year, they led me “beside still waters” of nearby Lake Merced (“mercy” lake) and we played on the shores of Sunset Beach and Fort Funston.

Hobbes and I walked together “through the valley of the shadow of death” with Calvin when he was euthanized in our home there. Early the following Sunday morning, Hobbes and I witnessed a kind of “resurrection appearance” when on our walk we were joined by a collar-free silver-haired Calvin look-alike bounding in adolescent energy, as if reborn. (For more on this story, see chapter 8 of The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me about Life.)

At Fort Funston, a doggy-friendly beach, we once encountered a baby sea lion. Hobbes’s eyes widened with wonder, and I leashed her lest she get too close. Together we watched as it returned to the sea. I walked on down the shore, not knowing that Hobbes, now unleashed, was not with me. I looked back several hundred yards later, and realized Hobbes was awaiting the sea lion’s return, gazing out to sea at the spot we had watched it go back in the waves. She had witnessed dogs go in and out of the water, and I guess she assumed the same of the sea lion.

She never fetched outside like Calvin, but she did love to play fetch and keep-away indoors with her squeaky “mousey.” And she enjoyed it when I got down on all fours, challenging me to chase her by slapping her front paws on the floor while bending toward me, grinning and eyes sparkling with glee. So she also brought me the re-creation of play.

Hobbes would join me, usually on our deck, for my morning prayers, eventually expecting a belly rub on each side. At night and during naps, she often slept on our bed, turning to face the open doorway, our protector as well.

Calvin’s eyes were always happy, but Hobbes’s eyes ranged from happy to wistful to sad, with soulful expressions, and she sometimes watched me longingly, especially in her latter days. At times I wondered if she were my mother reincarnated, so attentive she was to my presence.

Every death of a person or of a relationship reminds me of how imperfectly I have loved, and her death was no different.  In these final years of my life, I understand how imperfectly I have loved people and pets, as well as congregations and the broader church. Thus I am all the more grateful for God’s grace.

Hobbes was a theophany for me, a living, breathing, furry icon of God’s wonder, grace, and love. As a blog reader comforted me, “She was God in Hobbes-clothing.” I will miss her. And she will always be in my heart.

Click here and scroll down for other posts that mention Hobbes, who even made it into The New York Times!

P.S. Since posting this, I discovered that Pope Francis, in his June 18^th encyclical on climate change, wrote, “Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all.” He ends the encyclical with prayers, including, “Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey toward your infinite light.” Thanks to Nicholas Kristof for his column, “A Pope for All Species.”

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

A Grief Observed

Hobbes resting just last month. Photos by Wade Jones.

Maybe a scholarly English gentleman like C. S. Lewis can observe his grief with detachment, but most of us would rather write something like “Wracked with Grief” to best capture the panic that ensues with great loss.

I read Lewis’s A Grief Observed in youth when I knew far less about grief than I do now. I can’t find my copy, but I remember a passage in which Lewis describes wanting to bang on the gates of heaven after the early death of his wife, to whom he was married late in life and for only a few years. As I recall, he came to believe his panic shut heaven’s gates even tighter.

Right now I am preparing to facilitate a spiritual formation course on the Beatitudes, based on a text by its instructor, my friend J. Marshall Jenkins, entitled Blessed at the Broken Places. Hemingway’s concept in A Farewell to Arms that we become “strong at the broken places,” spiritual director, campus chaplain, and therapist Jenkins adapts to interpret Jesus’ sayings that the poor in spirit, those who grieve, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on, are “blessed”—not “happy” as the Beatitudes have sometimes been mistranslated—but “blessed” with sacred possibilities.

He reminds us that much in the Bible is a crying out from a poverty of spirit or goods or well-being or freedom or equality, from Exodus to Job to the Psalms to the Prophets to the Gospels. Thus I would challenge Lewis’ notion (as I recall it) that panic automatically closes doors to God’s comfort and care and compassion. “Out of the depths I cry to thee,” the psalmist and our liturgies cry. “I have heard their cry,” Yahweh says of the oppressed Hebrews.

That may be why Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We need to know our need, to have humility, to ask for help, whether from God or others.

Though some may think this an unworthy grief, the death of our beloved dog, Hobbes, two weeks ago came crashing down on us. (See last week’s post, “Hobbes Found Me,” for her great significance to me.) After months of stressful caregiving, we made the difficult decision to have an in-home euthanasia when she could no longer walk or stand, having lost weight and muscle mass because of her greatly diminished appetite and nausea related to a mass on her liver. She was also nearly 16 years old, aged for a Lab/retriever mix. 

Wade and I sobbed at the choice, and, as I had done when I needed to do the same for her companion dog, Calvin, I wailed like a banshee! And unanticipated grief comes here and there and now and then, as we notice her missing, from our walks and naps and meals to her many corners and places in our home where she liked to sit or sleep or look out. Think Tiny Tim’s empty chimney corner multiplied by the dozens.

And then I have been wracked with guilt about our decision to euthanize her. Multiply that second-guessing many times and you know the wariness of making end-of-life decisions for family members, or a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy. That’s why those families and those women need all the support we can provide.

Something in the not-yet-published Blessed at the Broken Places helped me with my second-guessing. Jenkins points out that Jesus does not say that those who are righteous will be blessed, but rather those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed. Believing one is righteous easily leads to self-righteousness, an absurd notion of perfection, with no need for God’s help. It is those who hunger and thirst for righteousness who will be blessed.

Trying to do the right thing for our dear dog was our hungering and thirsting for the good, the right, the compassionate. My preoccupation with whether or not we did the right thing at the right time was coming from my perfectionism, a need to justify myself (even in this post!), rather than rely on God’s grace (and that of my readers, as well as of Hobbes!).

I also realized it was a way to avoid fully embracing my grief at our loss, and in “our” I include Hobbes as well as Wade and me. Over-analysis was causing paralysis in my grieving process.

In my book, Henri’s Mantle, I described our need to “stand under” grief rather than attempt to “understand” grief, using a concept of the novelist Albert Camus that trying to understand something is often a wish to be in control, to have “superior” knowledge, to be on top of things, as it were.

Jesus’ Beatitudes are all about “standing under,” knowing our needs, trusting his path.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” We’re still a mess, but neighbors, friends, and family have offered comfort with visits, hugs, Facebook “likes” and messages, e-mails, cards, phone calls, flowers, wine, and even brownies. Thank you! And Jesus has offered comfort through the Beatitudes, and providentially at this time, a fresh interpretation of them.

We are also blessed by our many happy memories of our dear friend, Hobbes, whose absence highlights the joy she brought us and the love we exchanged that will endure long after our present pain. Thank you, Hobbes, and thanks be to God for you!

Hobbes waiting for a treat from our table.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.