PeaceBang

PeaceBang’s Pack

When SweetieBang moved out, I was pretty frantic about the idea of being a busy, single beagle mom. I take dog guardianship seriously and the reason I hadn’t adopted a dog years ago was because I think it’s cruel and selfish to leave a pack animal crated or alone for 10-12 hours a day. A cat is one thing: felines are much more solitary animals, and although they get lonely and need attention and play time, they can do fine for long hours on their own. Dogs, however, need much more attention and exercise, not to mention the opportunity to visit their outdoor bathrooms! I thought I was in for expensive dog-sitters and horrible early winter mornings wearily leashing the dog and taking him outside for his toilet business, frantically rushing home after meetings to find a miserable, pee-soaked creature crying in his crate, and loads of guilt.

My anxiety was compounded by my dog’s breed: beagles are notoriously hard to train and for that reason, Greg and I were solemnly advised by the animal shelter never to let Max off his leash. “Beagles are one big nose on four legs, and they’re fast,” warned the shelter director. “The second he smells something exciting or sees a squirrel he’ll be off and tearing through the woods and you won’t see him for days.” All the beagle books said the same thing. I was petrified, as I have acres of woods behind my parsonage and a busy main street (it’s literally Main Street!) out the front door. But Greg reassured me that we could do it; we’d simply leash the dog every time we opened the door, we’d build an expensive fenced-in yard (for which my Parish Committee generously gave permission, even though the initial vision involved cutting a new door into the back of the mud room) and we would, in the words of “Project Runway’s” Tim Gunn, “make it work.”

Then Greg and I didn’t work out, and I got cold feet about caring for the dog on my own. I called my friend Judy who has three beagles and she talked me off the ledge. She described just how to contract for a fenced-in yard and promised to help keep an eye on Max on my busiest days. She cheerleaded me into reconsidering my ability to keep the commitment I had made in late March.

One night in late June I had a talk with Max. We sat on my bed together and I looked into his eyes and told him that I was worried that I couldn’t be the best caregiver for him. I cried. I told him that maybe he deserved to be with a family, with lots of people in and out of the house and a real pack to keep him feeling secure and always loved. I got his velvety ears all wet and he told me with his trusting brown eyes that he knew I already loved him and would do my best. We went to sleep and for once I didn’t move him to the foot of the bed but allowed him to snuggle himself against me, his smooth little seal’s head resting on the curve of my hip. The cat came and curled up at my head, purring. When I awoke the next morning I realized that my fears about caring for the dog I had adopted were actually spiritual fears that have plagued me all of my life: how much love and care are we allowed to ask for? How much nurturing can we expect from those who claim to love us? When does our need for love and care tip into the category of “too needy,” and is there any such thing?

I believe that there is not. I have been told by people I once trusted that there is such a thing as being too needy, and I no longer believe them, although I certainly do believe there is such a thing as having a limited ability to give love. Those who don’t have great reservoirs of love to give often accuse those who desire relationship with them of being too needy. I am finally figuring this out. Yes, extending love, care and compassion can be tiring and can drain our inner resources. But when that happens, it is our own responsibility to care for ourselves, to set boundaries in a kind and fair way, to seek understanding of ourselves and others, not to attack or blame those who are vulnerable and reaching out to us. Yes, there are some unhealthy people in the world who are true energy vampires who give nothing back, but they’re easy to spot and possible to extricate oneself from. They are not the norm. Why had I doubted my capacity to love and care for this adorable little being? Why had I backed away in my heart from this “needy” creature? It was time for an exorcism.

Over the next few days after our little talk, I observed Max carefully and saw that he has five basic needs and that I could meet all of them. His needs are to sleep, to eat, to pee/poop, to play, and to be loved.

I started taking him everywhere with me, determined to make him part of my “pack” of friends and their children and animals. I stopped crating him when I left the house and trusted him with full run of the kitchen, which made our hours apart much easier on both of us. To my great relief and gratitude, he did not engage in any of the beagly behaviors I had been warned about: destroying furniture, digging, or baying. He seems to spend my absence sleeping on a blue cushion, curling up in his crate of his own volition, or chewing toys. I imagine the cat pays him a visit, as she is agile at jumping the baby gates that contain him.

I took him on pastoral visits, and to church meetings. I took him on play dates with doggie pals –with great trepidation because he’s not always well-behaved when meeting other dogs during walks. To my relief, I found that Max is great on playdates. My friend Michael encouraged me to let him off leash in his backyard one afternoon and I was elated to find that when other doggies are around, Max is happy to frolic in the immediate vicinity and shows no considerable interest in tearing off in pursuit of prey. Victory! I encouraged him to curl up in my lap while I watched movies or read books, understanding that for him, warm bodies in a pile means comfort and family even if for me it means dog hair on my clothes and a furry puppy making me warmer on a hot day. I maintained some necessary boundaries with him (no, he can’t visit the bathroom with me, no, he can’t jump on me when I’m eating or cooking, no, he can’t come into the store with me, no, he can’t play with my shoes, clothes or home furnishings but he CAN play with one of his many toys. No, he can’t terrorize Ermengarde, he has to respect her as Feline Diva of the Household.) I wrestled with him on the living room floor until we were both panting and laughing. He fake-gnawed on my neck and growled and I gnawed on his neck and growled right back. He absolutely loved every second.

I began to sleep as late as I wanted, and Max slept soundly along with me. He is fine managing his bladder around my schedule. I had obsessed over nothing.

For the first time in my life, I let instinct guide me and shut out the old, critical voices that would judge the way I was choosing to integrate this dog into my life. “You give that dog far too much attention,” or “Just let him chase the cat, she’s too spoiled” or “He has to learn to be alone, just get on with your life.”
What if I gave him all the love and attention he needs for awhile? I wondered. What if I just met all his needs and made him my focus for a couple of weeks, not rejecting him in any way for being “too needy” because he obviously wants to be with me so much? What if I treated him the way I would like to be treated, which is to be totally and unconditionally accepted for my nature? What if I did the dog thing instead of the human thing and didn’t project my own wounds and insufficiencies onto this little animal?

So that’s what I did, and what I am still doing. One afternoon a week or so ago as we were walking out in the yard, I thought about how much I DON’T want to build a fenced-in yard or get an electric/invisible fence that would zap Max and maybe not even work. Then I had a radical thought: what if the shelter director was wrong? What if all the books are over-generalizing about beagles? What if this beagle is just a really mellow version of the breed who can be trusted off his leash in my own backyard? What if he had some obedience training by his previous guardians that is or was unapparent to me? What’s the worst that could happen if I tested my theory? He’ll run off and I’ll be a worried mess and then he’ll come home or a neighbor will find him — maybe even Judy! What if I let go of fear around this dog and started having some real fun with him? I opened my hand and let go. Max ran off with the leash towing behind him while I watched, trusting and hoping with all my heart that I was right. He bolted down the length of the yard, made a happy little circle in the grass, and came bounding right back toward me. He thought it was a great game. I clapped and whooped, and he tore around like Seabiscuit, excited and proud and loving his freedom.

And so we did that for about a week. I put baby carrots in my pockets and took him to the back yard, letting go of the leash and letting him run around, sniff and do his business. I made up a little three-note whistle to use when I wanted him to come to me and he learned that when he did, he might get a carrot treat in addition to a thousand kisses. “Max!” I whistle, clap twice, squat down and open my arms. My beagle comes flying toward me, ears flapping in the wind, and skids to a stop between my knees. He never tires of coming to get his loving praise and I never tire of giving it. Sometimes it takes four or five whistles for him to obey me. Sometimes he goes into the woods to scout out some creature and I have to go in and help him “remember” where I am. But even as I am leading him firmly back to the yard, I never yell at him, only correct him with stern and simple commands he can understand, like “Off” or “Come.” And then, even if it took a few “reminders’, he is lavished with love and praise when he gets where I want him, because I want him to associate coming back to home base with happy feelings with Alpha Dog Mom.

As of two days ago, he doesn’t even have the leash attached at all. He comes outside when given permission, follows me to the yard, and we play. I throw a ball and he catches it and runs to me with it. Sometimes he bolts right by me and I have to mock-chase him, which he adores. He races around in circles until he exhausts himself and flops down in the grass. He drinks from a yellow bowl filled with rainwater. I scold him for eating poop (we have to work on that), but he comes to my whistle with 95% reliability. When I think we’ve had enough, I whistle and clap and he follows me inside, through the screen door where the cat has been looking out and waiting for us.

We are a pack. Everyone gets, and gives, all the love they need, and it is never too much.

(Max on his way to or from a playdate, mid-yawn, July 2008)

Happy Birthday, Tim Gunn!

For “Project Runway” fans, this is just really funny, and couldn’t we all use a laugh tonight?

Dan Harper on the Knoxville Murders

My friend and colleague, the Rev. Dan Harper, has an excellent post on the attack in Knoxville here. He includes a lot of excellent links. Thanks, Dan.

Here’s another disturbing angle on the assailant’s motives and hatred for liberals.

Knoxville

All Unitarian Universalist eyes and hearts are turned toward Knoxville, Tennessee, including mine. I would like to thank all of you from other traditions who wrote me off-line to express your solidarity and sympathy for our family of faith. These expressions of care mean so much.

I am angry, devastated, and disheartened. I don’t understand why this country refuses to deal with the issue of gun control and in failing to do so, makes a hypocrite of itself when it declares mourning over these events. This is — what — the fourth or fifth church shooting this year? Are we up to half a dozen yet? And school shootings, how many of those?

I attended a vigil in Boston last night at the same hour the Knoxville community was observing theirs. Our congregation will be joining with four other area UU churches for a service this Friday evening. We will grieve and say the expected things about peace, justice, healing and unanswerable questions. We will sing the expected songs. It will be good to be together. And in my opinion, if we do not move forward with activism on behalf of gun control, our good will and our questions will be empty gongs and clanging cymbals (and symbols?) as Paul warned in I Corinthians 13. Yes, Paul was talking about love, not activism. He was saying that without love, faith has no meaning. We talk about Faith In Action. Is that not the same thing as Love In Action?

Yes, I have faith that this is God’s world. And I have hope and I have love. But in the aftermath of an event like Knoxville, love for me is not a feeling but a calling: a call to keep guns out of more hands by whatever legal means we can manage, and keep at it until the news of some hateful wack job shooting into any assemblage of civilians is truly shocking, unheard of, a crime so rare as to actually stop us in our tracks.

That’s all for now. Peace be upon the dead, God’s strength be with the community, and may justice come.

Photo of the noon vigil in Knoxville by Clay Owen, News-Sentinel

Everything is Broken

After a big storm the other day, the stove broke, my two satellite receivers had to be replaced, and my modem seems to have burnt out too.

So I’ll be off-line for a few days (believe me, I could use it!) but please keep commenting and reading. If you don’t see your comments right away don’t despair like that woman who wrote a comment about how she was rich and how all the anti-rich people commenters to one of my posts were causing her to bleed from her soul and didn’t anyone CARE? I didn’t have a chance to moderate her comment for 24 hours but by that point she had already posted again saying that she had no choice but to conclude that no one DID care. I tried to e-mail her to say “Listen, don’t take it personally, I was out of town and no one has even seen your comment yet, let alone had a chance to respond,” but she had made up the e-mail address AND the domain name so the e-mail never went through.

I’m tellin’ ya.
See you soon.
Peace.
Bang.

Buh-Bye, Manny

It’s absolutely ridiculous that a baseball player should have me so angry that I’m practically back on Prilosec. But for those of us who love the Red Sox and who have shrugged or laughed off “Manny Being Manny” for eight years, his absence at last night’s game was the last straw. At this point it’s not about diva behavior that we tolerated because he’s such a great hitter or eccentricities that we indulged like grinning grandparents of an endearingly naughty toddler, it’s about work ethic. It’s about basic respect for teammates, for fans, and for the game. It’s about honesty and the sad, infuriating fact that we just can’t trust Manny Ramirez any more. His knee is sore, he says. Well, that’s possible. He missed 28 or so games in 2006 due to a sore knee — we remember. So Sox management sent him out for an MRI on both knees last night and both came back clean. Who can believe him now, after he’s pulled this same passive-aggressive nonsense so many times before? Red Sox Nation embraced this character and have been betrayed by him too many times.
It’s about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry: did he have to pull his shenanigans for THIS particular series?

After his recent slamming around Jack McCormick in the dug-out, his antics in the outfield, and his unforgivable upstaging of Big Papi on what should have been Ortiz’s triumphant return to the game last night, this fan is OVER Manny. The team won’t be the same without him, but every time I see Johnny Damon at bat for the Yankees and think of the glorious season we won the World Series with him as one of our guys, I think, “Well, I got over Damon, I can get over Manny.”

For those of us who have a special life commitment to the concept of “team,” this really hurts. In my case, that hurt takes the form of acid burn in the stomach. I can only imagine what the other Sox, and the Sox brass, are feeling.

Manny was recently quoted as saying, “My biggest dream is not to hit 500 home runs or 600, or 700, my dream is for God to give me enough health to watch my kids grow up, have a beer with them, watch them graduate. That’s my Hall of Fame.” You know what, Manny? That’s really cool. It shows that you have your priorities straight. But you’re making many millions of dollars to play baseball. That’s your job. Whether or not you dream of entering the Hall of Fame shouldn’t prevent you from doing your job as best you can. That’s called integrity. And right now, I doubt that you have much of that.

Private Prayers Made Public

Barack Obama visited the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem a few days ago, and like millions of faithful have done before him, inserted a prayer within its crannies. Some schmuck fished the note out of its hole and made its contents public.

Yes, I provided a link, which makes me part of the violation of Senator Obama’s privacy. But I figured I’d save you Encyclopedia Browns out there the trouble of looking it up on your own. Because who doesn’t want to know what Obama is praying for? The media, in picking up this story, is apparently counting on the answer to that question being “no one!”

Do we have a right as citizens to know to Whom or for what our leaders are praying? Or do we merely want to know because we think having this information gives us special insight into the character of the one praying? If the contents of your own prayers were made public, would that make you fit or unfit for office, in your own opinion? As far as my own prayers go, I think it depends. If the voting public appreciates a leader who is extremely self-critical, not very often at peace with herself, and often prays to be delivered from lifelong habits of mind and personality in order to better serve God/Wisdom/Truth/Beauty, a peek inside my mind or my journal wouldn’t much harm a run for office. But if the people want a leader who prays primarily to maintain a serenity that is naturally theirs, or who prays for victory, certainty (a la “The Decider”) or special favors for herself or her nation, I’d not be their gal.

I admit to being very touched by Barack Obama’s prayer, and especially to note that his first line invokes God’s protection of himself and family.

However, it’s worth asking: do we think that Barack Obama is so naive as to have not considered that his words might not be stolen out of the wall? I honestly don’t know. Certainly such a thing is an outrage against Jewish tradition, but times have changed and the stakes in the American presidency are extraordinarily high for Israelis (and in fact the entire Middle East). Obama seems to be very well-acquainted with human nature by now, and I imagine that his innate politician’s good sense would prevent him from penning a prayer that was controversial, overly-fervent or in any way cryptic. His prayer is lovely, generic (no phrases in there that wouldn’t be intimately familiar with any service-attending Christian or Jew) and ultimately private. Whether it was written as the sincere petition of his heart or after some political reflection and consideration we’ll never know.

Which serves us right.

I Remember Neil Armstrong…

I was just a wee lass when the U.S. made the first moon landing, but I well remember my parents’ awed tone when they called me into their bedroom to watch the event. Neil Armstrong was such a super all-American hero my younger brother was almost named Neil (he avoided that fate, thank Zeus). Now, I love the old-school astronauts and everything, but I must admit to having a wicked crush on Garrett Reisman:

Is this guy a funny, smart, cute dreamboat or WHAT? Did you hear what he said last night when Colbert asked him if, after spending 95 days in space he thought he would ever get home? Reisman said with that big adorable grin, “No…I have too much to do around the house.”

And he JUST turned 40!

Welcome, Boston Globe Readers!!

Boston Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson gave me a shout-out on his blog today so I thought I’d give any new stoppers-by a more substantive, truly Unitarian Universalist-oriented entry to read than my latest cultural commentary. But for now, that dog is prancing by the door and that can’t be good. Get that leash, Max! Mama’s comin’!

[Post-doggie walk, we’re back!]

The archives are pretty well-organized, and if you’re new to blogs all you need do is scroll around under the categories to the right that appeal to you and click to find related entries. I do everything from theological reflection to sermon excerpts to “random rants” to movie and book reviews (I was one of the only religion writers –however minor — to lambaste Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling Eat, Love, Pray last year, causing quite a furor in the comment sections) … and for those of you who are planning to go whale-watching this weekend, you might enjoy this reflection on whales. Hey, we’re nothing if not varied in our offerings here at PeaceBang!

Want to weigh in on the songs that make you cry? Dozens of other readers did so recently here. Blogs are fun. PeaceBang aims to be fun, provocative, interactive and to help demolish the stereotype of clergypeople as pious, one-dimensional characters who are so focused on ancient ideas and scriptures that they don’t have both feet firmly planted in the here-and-now, with a dash of hot sauce to go with their spiritual and pastoral dimensions. Visit often, comment freely, and see you around the blogosphere. Or at the MFA tonight. Or at Fenway this weekend, if someone wants to invite me!!

Peace.
Bang.

Kathy Griffin: Hollywood’s Goofiest Gadfly Losing Her Buzz

Although the hair is a bit silly, look how cute Kathy Griffin used to be:

Here she is at age 48 after numerous plastic surgeries:
The hair is garish but she’s soldiering on with the glamour thing and she claims to be happy with her nips, tucks and pulls.

But here she really scares me. You can’t nip, tuck and lift the skin, iron the hair AND slap that much make-up on exhausted skin without looking like a female impersonator.
Kathy, stop!!
I’ve got her Bravo show on in the background right now and I’m sad for her. She used to be the truly devil-may-care, madcap loose cannon of Hollywood — she careened around mocking the vanity and insanity of the entertainment industry and now she just seems exhausted, desperate and unhappy. She’s not very funny anymore, just crass, and I kind of wish I could tuck her in with a box set of the “Little House” series (or maybe Anne of Green Gables), feed her soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and tell her it’s okay to take a few years off. I think she’s a really wonderful talent and wish her the best. Anyone who tells Stephen Spielberg to get over himself has my loyal admiration (that was after a big brou-ha-ha that arose after Kathy joked with 10 year-old actres Dakota Fanning on the red carpet at the Oscars one year that she had just gotten out of rehab, to which young Miss Fanning let forth a startled giggle. An irate Papa-figure Spielberg demanded that Kathy issue an official apology, to which Griffin replied that any a****** who thought she was serious was obviously too stupid to worry about. When Spielberg threatened to blacklist Griffin, she laughed it off lamenting “Oh God, I won’t get cast in any more Stephen Spielberg films!” Atta girl!)

In other Bravo news, “Project Runway” looks to be FAB this season!! Yay!