A dog can be for Christmas

My good friend Celia Haddon, who writes a pets advice column for another newspaper, sent me the most wonderful Christmas e-card of a dog playing in the snow with flashing stars. Her site and the RSPCA are among many that emphasise how important it is to understand what goes into caring for a dog before going out and buying one, however much a child might ask and pray for one. I love dogs in theory, but a dog is not a creature I could ever accommodate in my life, for practical reasons, as well as because they seem to like the taste of my flesh too much for comfort. The Bible is not very pro-dog but it is v non-pc to be anti-dog today. Even Paris Hilton has acquired a couple of puppies. So with that in mind, I've invited Northants rector Stephen Trott to do a guest doggy blog for Christmas.

Stephen Trott, Rector of Pitsford with Boughton, writes a weekly Bible column for the Church of England Newspaper and also occasionally writes on canon law. He is also a member of the Archbishops' panel of reference, set up to help resolve disputes over gays in the Anglican Communion, and which he assures me is hard at work, mainly by email. As a General Synod member he's on a number of committees, and he has also in his time been involved with the Prayer Book Society, and set up its original website. Now his focus is on his parish ministry, which he regards as the greatest work of the Church. He recently appeared in a story in another newspaper after a dramatic motorway encounter with a wallaby. Meanwhile, other animals arouse a different kind of love at this time of year. See Dave Walker's cartoonchurch blog for some turkey advice. (Dave supplied the cartoon that I've used for my own Christmas card this year.) And see what bloggers are saying about fake dog cloner Hwang Woo-Suk here.

Stephen writes:

I used to look at my dogs in an anthropocentric sort of way, and wonder just how it was that my ancestors succeeded in domesticating so radically their ancestors. The bond between us and our four-legged friends is surely more than just one of mutual convenience. Now that scientists have got around to decoding the canine genome, in the shape of Tasha the boxer dog, we might just find out how it was done and how extensively it affects a dog’s DNA. Not to mention ours. (For links to stories on Tasha and other dogs, see here.)

There is a remarkable bond of affection between humans and dogs, which some think sentimental, but which for some people is akin to sharing life with a much-loved child. The scale of our relationships with dogs ranges wide. (Pictured here, our family dog Copper)

There is Clint Eastwood’s classic line, who when asked "does your dog bite?" replied "he bites me".

There are the gentler animals who provide essential companionship in countless homes up and down the land, for children of all ages from birth to otherwise lonely old age.

And what does one say to children when they ask about the meaning of Christmas for their pet, prompted by the ludicrous range of doggy presents on display in the stores these days, ranging from gift-wrapped dog food to Christmas t-shirts for all sizes of hound? There is little doubt what the dog would choose, but of course the pleasure lies in giving rather than receiving. It means no more to Gertie the Labrador or Trixie the Poodle than any other day of the year, or more important, any other meal of the year.

But still the children have a point. God made every living being on this planet, and no feat of human ingenuity, art or engineering comes even remotely close to comparing with the wonderful creature which is the family dog. Or any other living being, for that matter. Life is life, so utterly unlike our human inventions, but so much more like the Creator. Human beings uniquely bear his likeness and image, according to the Bible, but other forms of life are not so far off, something which the decoding of DNA is steadily revealing to us.

In the British Association debate at Oxford in 1860 Huxley famously trounced Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who doubted whether he was descended from a monkey, by declaring that he would prefer to be descended from an ape rather than from one who obscured the truth by argument. It is now clear that both Darwinian and Bishop shared a very large proportion of DNA in common with chimpanzees, and they with us. The source of life may remain a matter of debate, but so does its nature, which gives rise to existential wonderment of our own, and if we are wise, to marveling at the glory which is any form of life.

The human genome has of course been mapped for some time, although much of it remains unexplained, but it would be no surprise to discover, when canine and human DNA are finally compared and our development side by side is charted, that our own blueprint, like that of our dogs, has adapted over the centuries so that we are no longer owners and masters, as we had imagined, but equipped with a dependence on one another which is truly capable of being described as love. And however we express that love at Christmas or at any time of year, for other creatures as well as for human beings, we do well to acknowledge that it is their world as well as ours.

Pre-scientific Coleridge put it rather well:

'He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.'

All Saints Pitsford

Comments

[Steve Ward]

However mankind investigates relationships with other creatures, the physical plane in which sciences must operate, and which strictly binds perception, ultimately governs understandings as they are. In that respect we deal very much with the death aspect of existence as opposed to the life aspect, which, being incomprehensible in this system of things, remains indefinable - meat we know not of - in terms of explanation.

Indeed what scientists observe and describe as extra-life is in reality the extra death of physicality, the inherent being; the life force being immeasurable by any known standard save an innate awareness experienced by each and every alive thing, no matter how great or how small, how bright or how beautiful.

Life, in its light or Soul existence is neither sexually aware or form discriminating; this because all living dying things are important in universal function, being conceived of Creation. Any order which may exist at Life level is begot from purity of function; that is to say dissolution from death, thus are the " heavenly" hierarchies ordered: understanding that the ordering spoken of is not meritorious in the sense of reward but rather of function.
Hence all living Souls construct the Life force of the Universe, the same as all Spirit destructs unto death.

[Septuagent]

This is not about dogs ! I read your piece in the tabloid "Times" for 29 Dec 05 about the forthcoming CT article. The CT having arrived today, the article has now been read. My comment would be that I do not find the incidents particularly remarkable. My experience of parochial ministry (in rural areas)is that what is being described is the "normal" baseline. I could, but will not, tell you stories which are much more horrific, and go far deeper than any of these. My solution was to get out of parochial ministry and into ministry of a different type. However not all can do this, and for this reason I support the Society of Mary and Martha which was set up especially for those in ministry, lay or ordained, who simply need to get away for a time.

[Septuagent]

See also : http://septuagent.typepad.com/seventy_and_rising____/2005/12/religion_gets_a.html

Happy New Year to you and yours.

Septuagent.

[Steve Ward]

It is right to put things straight. Thus I apologise to you Ruth, and your readers for this sentence, which appears in my first contribution to this particular topic "A dog can be for Christmas" in your Blog …
'Life, in its light or Soul existence is neither sexually aware or form discriminating; this because all living dying things are important in universal function, being conceived of Creation'.

The awake will note that I am referring to two separate states here; of Life, as its universal field, and of living dying, which is the physical condition of human being.

The sentence should properly state 'Life, in light or Soul state is neither sexually aware or form discriminating; this because Life along with but not together with Death is the universal function, being conceived of Creation'. I know that in other writings I have set down elsewhere I've explained how our physical beings are constructs of Life and Death, which upon conception come to be 'amalgamates' of these two fields - the relative and the quantum – and are reformed or reconstituted as "living" and "dying" bodies.

Nonetheless I hope that my main concern, the information that I really needed to impart, namely that human beings are - where Creation is concerned - in no relative (or quantum) way superior to any other creature they share this universe with. Notwithstanding this we should recognise that the quantum field, as released into us as Spirit, will vie with its like and with the living field at every opportunity and will do so from out of every body wherein it exists. The bee sting at rear of Tutankhamun’s burial mask indicates (along with other important concepts) that the Ancients of Egypt were aware of this.

By the way the link in "Septuagent’s" contribution to this same topic is well worth following up; well done to him/her for an excellent piece of wisdom.

[Sandra Mackenzie Smith]

Dear Ruth
Have you been to see the wonderful exhibition of Egyptian tapestries at the Brunei Gallery London - www.wissa-wassef-arts/announcement.htm? It is the culmination of a fascinating experiment spanning 50 years and celebrates Muslim and Christian co-operation in the most uplifting way. I thoroughly recommend it. It has been sadly overlooked in the arts press.
Yours
Sandra