I have been feeding a black and white medium size female dog that has been wandering around our subdivision, looking so lost. She will not come near so I can't bring her in to meet her and tell her that I have named her Molly.
The county truck was around a few days ago but they missed her.Yesterday, I watched her eat from the the family room door and she held my eyes for a minute .Beautiful you are ,Molly with your liquid brown eyes.And so fearful.
There are also some stray cats, beautiful ones, roaming around.As I get older, I find myself connecting with dogs,cats,birds,turkeys in an almost mystical way.Perhaps when you try to open your heart to God, other creatures come sneaking in. When I read on the internet about animal abuse I am so saddened.How can a person swing a kitty around and fling it when the one I know sleeps by me as I watch T.V.?.
All of this animal love reminded me of time spent in Paris at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.We went in the Spring of 2005 and I had no expectations for this most famous of landmarks.When we walked in,the typical Japanese tourists were there, a crowd of them,taking mountains of pictures.Should they be called a snapping of Japanese? They were quiet but hustling around in the gloomy air along with a horde of others. Off to the side was a small area of wooden chairs reserved for those who came to pray.I silently walked in, knelt down and closed my eyes.I was mostly alone.Then I looked up to see what the chairs were facing.The rose window.Magnificent.Holy.And,in what is now a tourist destination,I felt Presence and peace.Rilke has said it better:
The Rose Window
"Inside,the lazy padding of soft feet
creates a silence,almost stupefies;
then all at once one of the drowsing cats
awakes-and pounces;its enormous eye
seizes the drifting image of that quiet,
which for a little while swims around,
before the golden whirlpool sucks at it
and drags it down to oblivion:
just as this eye apparently asleep
gapes open,strikes,and drags its capture deep
into the thunder of its own red blood-
so the rose window in that holy time
within the great cathedral's scented gloom
captured a heart and dragged it up to God." Ranier Maria Rilke
3 comments:
I'm reading your journal entry on the same day my sister is comptemplating pet adoption. She's lonely and found the most adorable dog named Tucker she's like to bring home. You can see his picture here: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/20916393-Tucker-Pekingese-Dog-Warner%20Robins-GA
I love your quote: "Perhaps when you try to open your heart to God, other creatures come sneaking in." I told my sister about your quote and suggested it was time to let Tucker sneak into her life.
I also have a favorite quote from Rilke. It's been behind a magnet on my fridge every place I've lived for the past 17 years. It reads:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and to try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue."
Kris,I think that it's a sign...she'll never regret it.Glad to see you name.
Our God said "The righteous man regards the needs of his animals." (Proverbs 12:10)
God chose to have his Son born among silent, gentle beasts.
I think there is a Godly answer, for those of us who are presently distressed, within the poem that Kris shared. Thanks Kris!
How about a "flash" mob of Japanese?
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