How It Is
With Us, And How It Is With Them
by Mary
Oliver
We become
religious,
Then we turn
from it,
Then we are
in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to
making money,
Then we turn
to the moral life,
Then we think
about money again.
We meet
wonderful people,
But lose them
in our busyness
We’re, as the
saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness,
it seems
Is more about
dogs than about us.
One of the
reasons we love them so much.
This
sermon is about dogs. This is also a sermon about kindness. If you are a dog
lover you can see how this is a natural connection. If you are not a dog lover,
don’t leave me just yet, perhaps these stories will speak to you beyond the
limitations of furry paws and sloppy wet kisses.
I’m
a country girl. I grew up in the rolling hills of upstate New York. I had a
tree house. I had a swing set. I had a ton of cats that may or may not have
actually been mine. And I had a dog. Dogs serve different purposes in the
country, as they do in city life. Country dogs are hunting companions, security
guards, and farm hands. A few miles up the road lived a man who raised Doberman
Pinchers to be fierce and dangerous. I don’t remember the why. I do remember
the warnings. If the dogs ever got out I was to run straight to the house as
fast as I could. I also remember the story my mother told me about the dog who
chased her as a little girl, pulling her off her bike, and mauling her ankle. It
made sense why people would have a mistrust of dogs in general, but the dog our
family had, the skinny version of a golden retriever mixed with a million
different breeds, served as a trusted companion and loyal friend for the
entirety of my childhood. All dogs are not bad. All dogs are not fierce. All
dogs, I decided, are manifestations of the ways we wish ourselves to be in this
world.
I
wish, in this world, to be kind. To be kind and gentle and wise. I have my
moments. However, if you are a gambling man let me just say that I am more
likely to rush to a platform of indignant impatience where I shine with inappropriate
quick-witted snarkiness fueled by an unlimited source of perpetual sarcasm. It’s
not super helpful to lift myself up as an example of kindness, or any person
really, I’ve decided today. People are unpredictable and competitive and fearful
and sometimes we are nice. Maybe it’s the precipice of my renewal leave talking
or the genuine grief stewing for a year of losing my two furry friends but the
most accurate story about kindness I could think of involves four legs, two big
brown eyes, golden brown fur that covered my clothes, car and apartment for ten
years, and predictably wretched breath.
Patrick
was kind. Not nice. Nice is a human thing. Nice says “everything is fine” and “I’m
sure they’ll be okay.” Nice is avoiding conflict, staving off true relationship,
and rejecting transformation. It’s not real. Nice keeps us moving horizontally around
the same hollow tree trunk; it’s momentary smiles and fake laughs and “we’ll
talk soon” knowing we probably won’t. Nice takes energy and I can say from
personal experience, nice is exhausting. It’s kindness of our own accord; empty
and fleeting. God never said be nice to each other, God said to love each other
and we love each other through kind action not through nice gestures.
I
can be very nice. I would like to offer up that many of us are experts in
niceness. As Meryl Streep so passionately sings in the finale of Into The
Woods, we’re “not good, we’re not bad, we’re just nice.”
Dogs
are not trained in the stage performance of niceties. They are not raised to be
“nice little girls and boys.” We teach them to sit and to stay and once in a
while they might sit and they might stay. They are what they are; Patrick was
kind.


But
here’s where the mask comes off, where the niceties are sucked dry, and we find
ourselves empty and waiting for something, anything to lead us out of the
uncomfortable place we sit. Patrick’s death contradicted all of my preconceived
notions of the right thing to do. It did not go according to plan. One day he couldn’t
even lift his back legs. He couldn’t go to the bathroom. And by 3am in the morning,
after lying in bed listening to him pant for hours, I let go of being nice and
I embraced the fear that accompanied being kind. Patrick passed that evening in
John’s arms at a 24 hour animal clinic a few miles from our house. They gave
him chicken, placed a needle in his arm, and he slipped beyond the sight of our
eyes and the touch of our fingers. His passing was a full on encounter of the brutality
that is kindness.

Mary Oliver writes, “... it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my
stories of grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will,
a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to
keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.”
These
fruits of the Spirit, this peace, this joy, this love, this kindness. These are
not gifts we can give; these are gifts we can harvest in the most honest and desperate
moments of our lives. Perhaps dogs have this down. This willing dependency,
this passionate loyalty. We are learning to let go. To embrace the reality of a
kindness that blooms when niceties run out, when we are swallowed up in the pond
of our own helplessness, when we relinquish our masks to all that is holy in
hopes that we might be nothing but fully present.
