Bishop's Column
Posted Tuesday, August 01, 2006
On Extending the Dog Days of Summer
August 2006
See, I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. (Luke 10:3-4)
When our daughter and son-in-law told us they had been invited to a friend’s wedding this summer in Istanbul, Joan and I agreed to take custody of not only Oliver, their six-month-old son, but also Franklin, their English Golden Retriever, last week. Having met our obligation, I can say with certainty that caring for a dog is much easier than caring for a baby.
Dogs, in fact, are very self-sufficient and relatively undemanding. They don’t wear anything that has to be buttoned, snapped, pulled on, or removed. Once you’ve filled their bowl, they eat on their own—no bottles to hold, no spoons to wield. Their only thoughts are in the present, and they don’t fuss or cry about what is or is not coming in the future. They are relaxed, easy-going, and take life as it comes.
Meeting years ago with middle school students at St. Philip-in-the-Fields, Oreland, I was asked if I thought dogs go to heaven. Yes, I said, God loves and cares for all of God’s creatures. But, I added, dogs are different from us because we have free will, but dogs do not. “What do you mean?” a seventh-grader queried. I used to put our Springer Spaniel Pogo, I said, in front of a full-length mirror so that she could look at herself, but never once did that dog give any indication that she saw herself and said, “Boy, do I need a haircut!”
“I wish I were a dog,” the youngster said.
There were people in Jesus’ time who shared that wish. They were called the Cynics—from the Greek word kune, meaning “dog.” We think of cynics as people who doubt everything and believe nothing. But the Cynics of antiquity were people who voluntarily embraced poverty in order to live as though, needing nothing, they had everything, and, having everything, lived free as kings.
We have no idea if Jesus consciously sought to imitate the Cynics or even knew about them, though they were certainly around in his time. What is clear, however, is that the manner of life he calls for parallels theirs. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals,” he says. Go naked, in other words, like a dog. Live in the moment; do not be anxious for tomorrow. Enjoy the liberty of having all you need. Emulate Christ who, to paraphrase W.H. Vanstone’s hymn:
… shows us God,
helpless hung upon the tree;
and the nails and crown of thorns
tell of what God’s love must be.
Here is God; no monarch he,
throned in easy state to reign;
Here is God, whose arms of love,
aching, spent, the world sustain.
August brings us the dog days of summer, so called because, given the heat and humidity (especially this year), it is best to lie low and go relatively naked. Jesus, in effect, calls on us to extend the dog days of summer year-round by trusting in his heavenly Father, lowering our anxiety, putting aside our anger, abandoning our claims, surrendering our wills, and voluntarily embracing that poverty which brings true freedom, dignity, and joy.
Dorothy Yost knows how to extend the dog days of summer. She joined St. John’s, Third and Reed, in her twenties and has been a member now more than 50 years. Today she has largely lost her hearing. Recently her parish went as a group to the Cathedral for Noonday Prayers. Because the person leading the service spoke rather softly, a fellow parishioner later asked Dot if she could hear anything. “No, but that’s not why I came,” she said. “I came because I thought they needed my prayers to be heard.” Here’s a woman who asks for nothing except the opportunity to give.
This summer, of course, we are witnessing mounting violence, both tragically within the neighborhoods of our own diocese and horrifically in the Middle East. Called for are restraint and relaxation, negotiation, and a spirit of nakedness. Jesus understands the reality of terrorism. He sends us “out like lambs in the midst of wolves.” He also has a strategy for addressing such a situation: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals”—as would a dog.
— Charles E. Bennison, Jr.