I speak dog

It’s been almost two weeks since I came home and found Sunshine unable to stand and in the midst of some type of seizure. It’s been nearly two weeks since I had to put her to sleep.

It’s been almost one week since I acquired another dog, this one a 25-pound fluff ball that is allegedly a Australian Cattle Dog, a “blue heeler”. He’s currently dragging around a knot in his mouth and batting a lacrosse ball across the living floor with his paws. Multi-tasking, I guess.

I hadn’t meant to get a new dog quite so quickly. And I wasn’t sure if I should. But the puppy needed a home and I needed a dog, and well, sometimes that’s all it takes. His coat came in black and his tail looks like he dipped it in a bucket of white paint. He has tan paws and a grey speckled nose. Who knows what color he will be in six months. He’s soft and wicked smart. When we walk somewhere new, he puts himself in my footsteps (heeling, herding me) with his little ears cocked all serious, trying to keep track of his charge.

I need for you to understand how completely different this animal is than my Sunshine. But this season of my life, preparing for a wedding and to join lives with someone else, is totally different than the one I just left. Fitting, I guess, that Sunshine would take leave of me at this particular point.

This new dog, Helo (the Helo monster, Little Fluffybutt, Mr. Barky Pants), is our dog. We, the couple, A and me, had to have a series of conversations about whether I was getting a new dog before we get hitched, when we were getting hitched, what kind of dog was I going to get that was going to be allowed to live in the house, what did he want in a dog, what did I want in a dog, what were we going to feed it, who was going to be its vet, blah blah blah…Exhausting and totally foreign.

I haven’t had to ask someone about what I want to do in my personal life (other than my priest or out of politeness) for most of my years now. Totally strange to have to do it … I told my sister that some of those conversations were like Sunshine’s last gift to me, prompted by her death and the impact that her dog soul had on my life. Those conversations grew me, grew the relationship and I know I’m not any good at having them, or even thinking about having them.

I told my sister about how it seems God knows I speak dog, not in a wow-is-she-a-really-good-dog-trainer way, but in the way that I learn more from them, or find they prompt some strange spiritual work in me that may not get done othewise.

The Sunshine season of my life, as I outlined earlier, was a place where I carved out space for myself to rest and to trust, something made so much easier by her calm and easy way, her love of naps and the way she just was happy hanging out.

I’m not sure what the Helo season is going to look like, but it’s already busier and I’m spending less time on the couch. It’s going to be a season of more intention and conversation, of better planning and discipline and it is the first thing A and I have done together.

He’s given up on the lacrosse ball (thankfully) and is now gnawing on a rawhide A bought him. I wonder what he’ll teach me tomorrow.

P.S. I’m using the Monks of New Skete‘s methods to work with him (Orthodox dog…)

On my friend

Ed. note: Sunshine died today (Jan. 13) at about 2:20. She died peacefully, with her head in my arms, hearing as she drifted off what a wonderful and good dog she was.

Once upon a time, I used to write obituaries. (Most real reporters have. If you haven’t, well…) Sometimes I still do. Big newspapers have ready-to-go obits, works in progress for really important people who, when they die, are going to require a lot of attention –like the Pope, the President, etc.

This is one of those obituaries, one I’m writing while my eyes are relatively tear-free. This is for Sunshine, my dog. She has not died, yet, but her time here with me is drawing to a close. I write this, not just in tribute to a really cool dog I’ve had the privilege of hanging out with for the past six years, but to give thanks to God for those things He brings into our lives to change us, to save us even.

I told my now-fiance A last night as we sat in my living room trying to figure out what to do with her that she was responsible for helping to bring much of what I have into my life — my house, my fiance and my emotional health. I believe these things are all true. For whatever reason, God used that really cool dog as an agent of change in my life and I am forever grateful.

Sunshine, Madame Fuzzy Fanny, Miss Barky-Pants, my sweet pea and fur friend, the honey bear and S-dog…has had a really good life, I think. She’s done things, gone places that most dogs never get to do. For the first year I had her (she was about six), she was the official newshound of the Journal Gazette’s west bureau. She came to work with me, slept under my desk, snoozed in the bureau kitchen, made me go for a walk in downtown Columbia City every afternoon around 4:30 and wagged her tail whenever I came back to the office.

She covered fires, floods, tornadoes, city councils, school boards and jury trials. Often sources figured out (I told them) she was outside and would often go out and say hi. The mayor of Decatur loved her because they had the same hair color. The police chief of Bluffton went so far one day as to go and take her from my car and put her in the police department. When I came to the police department, I saw my dog and the police chief trotting down the hall back to her office. We were looking for treats, she said. Later she told me she had just put her own dog down and could not resist enjoying an afternoon with a dog, any dog. Sunshine was snoozing under her desk while we talked.

She watched my back on those early morning web shifts from hell, including the recent wrenching morning that involved the fruitless search for the little girl. Sunshine always offered her ears for scratching and belly for rubbing after I had a long day at the courthouse. She listened as I swore and grumbled about my job. She chewed her rawhides with enthusiasm, rubbed her face with her paws when she was excited and buried bones throughout the yard, usually on Sundays.

Knowing she was soon to be my dog made it easier to break up with my Italian #*(&$% boyfriend, necessary for my emotional survival. I bought my house so she’d have more places to bury her bones. I took a chance on dating because, well, why not, the dog worked out so well.

But most importantly, and this goes back to those pills I take every day, she provided me an amazingly safe place to do the work I needed to do to get well. The VA prescribes dogs to veterans with PTSD. My therapist did the same back in the day for me. And for about seven months, Sunny came with me to every session, snoozing under Annie’s desk while we talked.

She was not a particularly well-behaved dog. She was extremely lazy, and people often mistook it for a desire to please. She really couldn’t give much of a crap. If she determined that the cost of moving (committing the sin) was outweighed by the benefit (eating the apple pie on Thanksgiving), well then, she’d do it. If not, forget it. She never, ever came when she was called and was horrible on leash.

But she loves me. And I love her. And for some reason that dog was brought into my life to work for my salvation. I have no doubt that she did just that. Should she pass on tonight, and go chase bunnies in the eternal back yard, I know that my life has been so much better because of that really cool dog.

Thanks, old girl.

On a familiar theme

Or actions have consequences, late 2011 edition.

I’m sure you hadn’t heard the news, what with the holidays and the recess appointments and the Iowa clown car, I mean caucus. So in case you didn’t, here you go.

The tauntaun made a bad choice New Year’s day and ate Princess Leia. As my 3-year-old nephew explained it, the tauntaun did not do what he was supposed to do, which was protect her, instead helping the tiger to eat her.

“But she’s ok. She came back to life,” he said as he made the tauntaun climb the door frame on the sun porch.

Well, thank the Force.

Most of our choices don’t have a complete reversal, especially if they’re tragic.

As I wrapped up the tauntaun the day before (we do our Christmas on New Year’s weekend), I was so mad I could spit. I intended to buy L a different present, as well as a more deliberate choice for my new month-old niece MM.

But I never got to the store last week for Christmas shopping or groceries. I ran out of milk, orange juice and patience as I chased the worst story I’d ever covered and the worst I hope I ever cover. It’s not over, so it will continue to aggravate the #*$(& out of me, but whatever. The bad choices of that guy spread out like so many ripples in a shallow pond after a boulder falls into it. The cops missed their Christmas with their families searching for that little girl. Normal people throughout the community prayed and hoped beyond reason for her safe return. And I sat and listened on the scanner to the fruitless hunt, lit a candle, had a good cry and knew in my heart she was dead. But all that work, hours and hours of chronicling the madness (I told one of my judges I felt like a carnival barker in hell…step right up and see the freak show), left me without the time and the emotional energy to engage in my own joy.

Thank God, seriously, I realized that was happening. It only took a day or two to figure out how to deal with it, put it aside for the time being and join in the celebration of so many recent blessings in my life and the lives of my sisters. I sit here now, on the tail end of a week off, nearly ready to go back to work. I know, though, that that one choice made by that mom to put her child in the care of that one guy, who made the choice to do what he did will continue to ripple throughout my own life, professionally and personally. I know it’s going to wear me out, make me cry, make me pissed off and make me spend time in the basement with my heavy bag, hitting the only thing I can.

The little princess didn’t come back from this one. I give thanks knowing that my sister is raising that little boy to understand that bad choices have consequences. And in spite of the resurrection of Leia and the rehabilitation of the tauntaun, L knows some things aren’t made right.

 

2011 in review (blog-wise)

I blogged a lot more this year and mostly out of necessity. As I was inspired by my friends at the MKs blog, struggled to wrap my head around the stuff I see everyday and continued to work to be a better Christian, blogging finally became nearly a necessity on some days. There’s more I could have said and probably some I shouldn’t have said. This is a teeny-tiny blog, but it provides me with something I guess I need. Thanks for indulging me. To those of you who interacted with me here and elsewhere, thank you.

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy birth-day!

There’s a new baby in my family, born this morning to my youngest sis and her hubby. She joins my nephew, one of the smartest, in-tune kids I’ve ever met (and I’m not just biased), in a family with a mom and a dad who want desperately to parent well.

They work, to pay the bills, at a residential treatment center in northwest Indiana, helping to redirect other people’s children who have (often through no fault of their own) gone off the rails. So these two little ones, my nephew and new niece, will be often around the have-nots. My sis feeds them holiday meals. My sis and her husband work as the directors of spiritual life, ministering, praying for them and crying with them over all the things that have occurred in just the few short years of their existence.

It is an accident of birth that my niece will spend today and every other day in the presence of those who love her, completely and faithfully. My nephew is already aware of the perfect Love of God, and loves Him in return (this is why we baptize infants, but that’s another blog for another time). I have no reason but to assume that my niece will have a similar experience. How lucky are they?!

I know so many people who love their children well. I know so many who try really hard to develop empathy, passion, respect and belief in their children. And I know, or more like I see, those who do not. My sister sees that too, and they spend so much time cleaning up that particular mess. And it is not the fault of those children — that they are poor, that they may smell bad or are dirty, or that at a variety of places down the line they were taken advantage of or used for someone else’s evil purpose.

If I were a Calvinist, I’d probably shrug my shoulders and be merely grateful that God “ordained” this better life for my beloved niece and nephew. But I’m not a Calvinist, so I believe that His justice and His grace demands that we endeavor to give those others the best life we can because it is not their fault, nor does it have to be their destiny, that they tumbled into this world on that side of the line.

Welcome little one! I can’t wait to meet you.

Sin eater

I promised a blog post tonight via my Facebook page, so here it is, though the thoughts running through my head when I promised the blog post have been pushed aside by new, less-important or less-pressing thought-lets. (baby, useless thoughts).

When I was thinking about blogging, I was listening to a local music show on NPR and a wonderful musician was playing a song she has yet to record called “These Sin-Eating Eyes.” It was perfect, perfect, perfect for me today and everyday.

I have always felt like a sin eater, in my home growing up and certainly in my profession now. Maybe not a sin eater in the classic Welsh and Appalachian way, but a sin eater none the less. (For those unfamiliar with the term, a “sin eater” is a person who was designated by the village to, via food and drink, take on the sins of the dying so they could pass from life to death peacefully.) It’s certainly not a Christian term or theological idea, but in the imagery one would be blind not to see a shadow of the Eucharist.

I spent all night last night dreaming about my father; dreams so evocative, so real, that when I woke up I forgot it had been nearly 10 years since we last spoke. It’s the time of year when thoughts of him and me and all that transpired between us are ever-present and sometimes heavy. I couldn’t right this minute tell you what my dream was about, but it may have been important. I’ve had a few of those lately. Don’t laugh, I know it’s weird, but that’s how I roll.

That book about the sin eater meant so much to me when I read it — this idea of being condemned to absorb the darkness around you on behalf of another. When I read the book, in my early 20s, I was just starting to dig at the meaning of my family, and how it molded me and shaped my understanding of God and a relationship to Him. I felt so helpless back then, burdened by a sense of obligation to take it all in, to deal with it, to fix it, to carry it so that those around me could have peace. I wanted a way out, any way out, because I knew it was destroying me.

This time of year that part of me bubbles up a bit to the surface. I feel a pull to the despair, to the anxiety, to the ridiculous sense of obligation for that which I cannot control. I am grateful, always, of the tools of my faith which provide me concrete ways through and around those ghosts of the past. But, like I’ve said countless times before here, often in relationship to what I see and do in the course of my work, you can’t unsee or unknow that which you now see and know.

Those sins, I’ve already consumed them. That darkness I have already taken into my soul. And like it is for everyone here, you my reader, regardless of your experience, that weight will be with you for awhile. But, taste and see that the Lord, He is good. His mercies are new, every single morning whether you are ready or desire it or not. For those who live their faith outside of the safety of the Sacramental life of the Traditional Church, know there is great peace and security here, where we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, where we taste the fount of Immortality.

We take in Life. And it wipes away our sins.

Ed. note: I highly suspect that this is one of at least a couple posts on this particular topic, since I clearly remembered what I was going to blog about.

Hit the reset

Top of the morning to ya’! It’s raining and I have small streams in my basement. You’ll have that with an old and somewhat creaky foundation. No big thing though…I keep important stuff up off the floor. And my powder’s dry.

My brother-in-law conducted an odd but interesting social experiment Thanksgiving night, after dropping my sister and nephew off at home. He drove 40 minutes back up the highway to the shopping centers to observe Black Friday. He found friends standing in line. He wandered through Target and other stores. He did nothing but observe (and buy my sis a new waffle iron. We all thank you).

At our family Thanksgiving, on Saturday, he was telling us all about it and it was interesting to listen to us talk to him, to hear him describe it. It was if he had spent six months with the Peace Corps studying aboriginal people. We just sat there slack-jawed as he described a culture that is not ours (none of us like Christmas shopping and our Christmases tend to be pretty simple and are getting more so as our budgets shrink).

Apparently it was a pretty good Black Friday (for everyone who wasn’t pepper sprayed or who had to work). And Cyber Monday broke records as well. I don’t know if you noticed, but gas prices stayed lower until last night, when they jumped 10-20 cents. Feel manipulated? You should. The teevees and pundits told us we were supposed to be happy little shoppers, park our sleeping bags outside the Kohl’s and march in when the bell goes off. It does not matter if you need the new pots and pans did-you-see-the-price-oh-my-god!

Part of me wonders, though, if the reason this shopping season is off with such a bang is because we as Americans are just collectively saying SCREW IT. I know no one (except my sister who finished grad school and got a better job) who has a healthier wallet. I know mine’s not noticeably improved. Retiring debt in one area means I just work harder then in others.

I think we are, in the words of Battlestar, hopelessly frakked. And I think we know it. So buy all, buy merrily, before we die all, die merrily. I have sensed, in a strange way, a bit more community in odd places, a bit more desire to stay put and grow roots and maybe help. There’s been more enthusiasm about our Christmas Bureau families at the office, and we have less money as a staff then we had last year.

I agree with this guy who said the whole global economy is beginning to reset. We know, in our hearts, this can’t continue. Those of us who pay attention to such things are watching Europe self-destruct, for now somewhat peacefully (but Lord, you know they can’t keep that up). We are making peace with $3.50 a gallon gas because we are sure it will be higher at some point. Maybe we’ve reached peak oil before we have anything to replace it.

Some of us, most of us, are still stuffing ourselves with trinkets and Twinkies, but I think I feel something changing. With any luck (please Lord, have mercy) we’ll keep our wits about us and settle in to the new normal, where we figure out how to keep our roofs over heads, our cars running and realize that our money is just money and we owe less than the banks do to us and well, you do what you can. Maybe we’ll figure out how to make life more local. If gas is expensive, it’s going to have to be. If those of us who have more (at least for now) can figure out how to ease the transition for the less-equipped (emotionally, physically and socially), we can keep our families safe as the water seeps through the foundational cracks of our Republic.

Keep the important stuff up off the floor and by all means, kids, keep your powder dry.

Living in constant luxury and merriment, man is indeed as if lulled to sleep by the strong drink of this world. But then, in the midst of luxury and merriment, the thought of death tugs at him and awakens him. Oh, I must die! I must leave this world! I must come before God and before the angels! Where is my soul? Where are my deeds? With what shall I leave this world, and with what shall I enter into the nxt world? Thousands upon thousands of those who have been awakened from sinful sleep by such questions have fled to the wilderness and, day and night, they amend their souls and purify their hearts by repentance, prayer, fasting, vigils, labor and other proven means by which man kills the fear of death, and becomes adopted by God.

- St. Nikolai Velimirović (h/t to Jason Rossiter)

Collections

Part of my job is to read all the civil lawsuits filed in Allen County (excepting small claims). So each day, alongside the felonious actions we take against each other, I pour through the mortgage foreclosures, the divorces and the wrongful death claims.

There’s a lot of medical stuff in there, too, particularly attempts by hospitals and medical groups to collect on the debts owed by the horrendously ill or injured. Those make me particularly sad.

This week I found one that was this poor guy being sued by the local neuro-spine and pain clinic for about $30,000. The bill was attached to the complaint, so I read the itemized charges. It was horrible. Skull infections, burr holes, hydrocephaly, pain meds. And after each treatment, it showed they ran his Blue Cross insurance card and it was denied. Here ya’ go, Mr. Unidentified Sick Guy, sorry about your brain injury and your horrific months of painful treatment but you owe us this much money. Did you know that down the street is federal court, where you can file for bankruptcy so nobody wins?

Why, Rebecca? Why are you telling us this on this happy day of balloons floating past Central Park, cranberry sauce, football games and family time?

Because I am thankful. I am thankful that nothing like that has befallen me or my family. Yet. I am thankful that I am have a job, that my mortgage has been reset at a lower interest rate so I can better afford the annual jacking-up of my insurance premiums.

I hope, though, that we as a nation, particularly those of us who claim to follow Christ, recognize that what happened to Unnamed Sick Guy is unacceptable in a developed country and that greater attention is needed as to who profits from others’ misfortune. I hope that we recover that inherent socialism that drives Limbaugh so crazy this time of year when we remember the shared table of the first (probably mostly mythical) Thanksgiving.  We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not.

So be thankful, my friends. Have a glass of wine and grab another slice of pie and be grateful that this year you probably weren’t the “least of these.” But remember those that are and remember that there, but for the grace and intervention of God, you could very easily go in the next 12 months.

Gobble, gobble.

 

Five Guys and the baby Jesus

Ed. note: As of 9 a.m. 11/15/2011, the murder trial was continued. Thank God for small favors.

Tomorrow starts the Nativity Fast.

This is going to be a long 40 days and I am in absolutely no frame of mind for it. The Penn State thing is driving me to complete distraction, but only because it makes me impatient for similar accountability of a legal variety for ABWE. My workplace has become completely crazy.  And there’s a murder trial this week, so game on.

Somewhere in here, I’m supposed to prepare my heart and my soul for the birth of Christ. I’m supposed to clean out the manger of my soul, right? Sweep out the cobwebs. Dust the furniture. Etc.

The fast is supposed to help with this. I’m supposed to pay attention to the little things, the basic activities like what I eat and how much time I spend in prayer, to tune everything up for the celebration of His birth. Great Lent is so much easier. Everyone in Christian culture is doing something to get ready for Easter. But the Nativity Fast, that’s all us in Orthodoxy. Like Wednesdays and Fridays, but everyday. While all of our culture is participating in an orgy of consumerism and fine dining, I’ll be learning a new way to cook shrimp (You know you’re Orthodox when you don’t think of shrimp as something special.) or rekindling my passion for peanut butter. It’s the anti-everything-about-the Christmas-season season

I prepared a bit, I guess, this evening. After working into darkness, and being continually frustrated by what was going on around me in the newsroom, I left with low blood sugar and high blood pressure. After the grocery store (don’t shop hungry, by the way), I stopped off at home and picked up the dog. She and I went to dinner tonight, driving back across town about 15 minutes just to eat a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger and a bag of fries. (I shared with Sunshine. She likes them.)

I guess that’s a start, right? Saying goodbye to bacon and hamburger for a few weeks, maybe that will help me get the rest of my house in order. I don’t know. If this nonsense keeps up at the office, they’re going to need to take my sharps away, or my stapler, or laptop… All the bad stuff, the Penn States, the ABWEs, the drama in my own communities, these things will be ever-present as well, making my soul tired and longing for the comfort of a pepperoni pizza.

Lord, have mercy on me and help me get through this season. All I want for Christmas, though, aside from salvation, is a really good cut of beef.

Morally mandatory

“The devil he wore such a fine, fine shirt
And it stayed so clean, While he dragged me through the dirt.”

Rocks and Water by Deb Talan.

I am not sure exactly why we’re here again, but we are. Ten years after Cardinal Bernard Law was exiled to Rome and the Boston Archdiocese left in ruins, the reputations of another American institution, this time big time college football and an iconic coach are caught doing the same thing.

Repeat after me, boys and girls: if you see a grown man forcing himself on a young boy in a shower, you do not call your boss. You call the police. I don’t care what the law says. I don’t care what your university policy says. You call the frakking police. Are we clear? OK, moving on…

Somewhere around 1996, my mom and sisters and I returned to Baltimore for a vacation to catch up with old friends. I was in my early 20s and a complete emotional disaster. The thing about abuse is how crazy you feel trying to make sense of it. Your brain can’t make sense of it, of course, because, by definition, it is senseless. But it tries, you try, and in the effort you usually end up tied in an impossible knot, your soul at the center and stuck.

Our oldest friends as a family lived in a beautiful rural area just outside the city. We stayed with them in a house my parents helped them build and one that my sisters and I ran around countless times as little kids. Mr. Jack and Miss Marian. Their names make me smile, just seeing them on the screen. Mr. Jack and I ran an errand one evening during the vacation, buying milk or something at a convenience store up the road. Earlier in the afternoon, the house lost power and BG&E came out to fix it. Because of the single lane going to their house, Mr. Jack and I were trapped in the driveway for awhile while we waited for the trucks to leave. I will never, ever forget that conversation in the darkening car.

He looked me square in my eyes and apologized. We should have done something, he said. We knew there was something wrong with your father, that there was something wrong with how he treated you and the others in that house. And we didn’t do anything. We prayed for you, but we should have done more.

What could you have done, I asked.

Something more, he said, tears in his eyes.

That conversation pushed me a huge step forward on the path to un-knotting my life and how I felt about it. It made all the difference in the world, particularly since I held nothing against them because of their inaction. It hadn’t even occurred to me at that point that what was going on may have been visible to others.

Over the years, a few others along the way have made similar statements to the women in my home. All were welcome, but none so blindingly gracious as that encounter in the driveway. Someone knew. Even when we didn’t know (or more accurately, didn’t know we knew). And yes, they should have done something. But they realized it and did the best they could years later. They owned it and took responsibility for the damage their inaction may have caused.

I am sure that we’ll be here again, as a culture, as communities, as churches, as brothers and sisters in this place gone mad. But by God, it does not have to be this way. My friends on the blog are still looking for a similar, heartfelt encounter with the POTB at ABWE. Maybe the grand jury that took at shot at Penn State just 90 miles up the road will prompt some fearful action on their part. But I ain’t holding my breath.

We, as human beings, should not concern ourselves with the legal minimum responsibility to each other. And we need to understand it’s always going to be hard. It’s always going to be the respected coach, the medical missionary, the beloved parish priest. It’s always going to be a shock, a horrible surprise. And if you fall asleep at the switch, for the love of all that is good and holy, do NOT stand there and say, well, I did the least I could do. It doesn’t matter the LEAST you can do. The LEAST of US trumps that, every time.

Taking action, being accountable, protecting them…it’s morally mandatory.

Not an option.

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6