There are a lot of theories about how dogs as a species became domesticated. They definitely came from wolves, but the how remains shrouded in mystery. Tens of thousands of years ago, in the days of hunter-gatherers, a group of wild wolves self-domesticated themselves by getting closer and closer to humans for food. That’s one theory. Or, early hunter gatherers raised wolf puppies until they domesticated a subset of the species. Or, humans and wolves hunted large game together with humans following wolves on the hunt and wolves hanging around to get the scraps when humans made a kill. However it happened, dogs have been “man’s best friend” for a very long time.
I am a dog person through and through. When I was a child, my family had funny little Scottish Terriers. As a young adult, I had a penchant for rescuing dogs. And, as many of you know, my family now has Molly Moon, a 5 year-old Bernese Mountain/Poodle mix.
Turns out, some of you are cat people. I’m not judging, simply observing. As a teenager, I remember being stunned to learn that some families don’t have dogs. They have cats. And it’s a whole other arrangement. While modern day dogs have mastered the art of a raised eyebrow or sheepish grin to get what they want, cats don’t care. Dogs seem to read our emotions pretty well while cats seem to have come to the conclusion they have domesticated us. But even cats, I’m told, “meow” more when they are around humans. They communicate too.
Regardless of what kind of animal you share living space with, you know that we serve them. Feeding, walking, cleaning litter boxes, administering medication, trimming tiny toenails, rearranging our schedules….it’s all part of the deal. Pets interrupt our plans because they have needs of their own. What if that interruption is part of the gift?
When I get home at the end of a long day and sit down at the dinner table, EVERY TIME, Molly goes straight to the front door and scratches wanting out. If I ignore her, she does it again and then comes over to stare at me until I acknowledge her.
Molly doesn’t need to go outside, she just wants my attention after I’ve been gone all day. When I can get past my annoyance, Molly’s attention seeking behavior is a gift. It draws me out of myself and my love for that goofy dog brings me back to the moment.
The Old Testament reading from Isaiah is a song about a vineyard. The poem is a parable that features God as the vineyard keeper and God’s people as the vineyard. Notice the action in this poem. God digs, clears, plants. God builds, prepares, and expects. Before this becomes a story about judgment, it is a story about care.
For those of you who garden, isn’t it the same? I look out my office window to see Gieth and others tending to the Epiphany gardens. They require a lot of attention. Likewise, the vineyard doesn’t happen accidentally. It needs tending and nurture. Gardens and vineyards are microcosms of the world we inhabit. God’s creation preceded us. We didn’t create it, and ultimately we don’t possess it. That’s the thing about love. It requires constant tending. And tending and nurture require our focus too.
St. Francis, whom we remember today, lived in sync with nature, immersed in a mutual relationship of love and care with creation. He wrote about “Brother Sun and Sister Moon.” His relationships with nature weren’t about ownership, but rather kinship. Francis didn’t “like” animals. Francis understood himself in relationship to animals. Francis engages creation as kin rather than property. We participate in God’s continuing work of creation when we cultivate and tend what God has given. God tends the vineyard and we are invited into God’s tending.
Did you notice in the poem that the vineyard yielded “wild grapes” despite it’s tending? Sometimes that happens. We tend, but we don’t control. I take care of Molly and she still snatches food off the kitchen counter. Apparently tending sometimes means learning where to put the freshly baked bread.
To tend something, you have to pay attention. We cannot care for what we do not notice. In a world in which the little computers in our pockets constantly pull us somewhere else; animals keep returning us to the present. The dog needs a walk now. The cat is settled into your lap now. That particular bush needs sniffing for a very long time right now. Pets experience the world bodily and immediately. They have no concerns about what tomorrow might bring. When we love them, it pulls us into that embodied attention. Think about the moments you have shared with pets over the years; fur beneath your hand as you pet them, the tug of a leash, the gentle snores of a cat in the window. The present is where eternity touches us and we encounter God. Pets help us enter that space.
Over and over, God meets us in embodied, creaturely existence, and animals have an uncanny ability to return our distracted attention to that place of encounter.
Holy scripture proclaims an intimate God rather than a distant or even abstract God. God becomes incarnate. In Jesus, God takes on flesh. Jesus eats, sleeps, walks, touches, weeps, and loves. God chooses the embodied experience as the place of encounter between creation and the divine. Our animals don’t pull us away from the spiritual life into the mundane. Quite the opposite. Animals pull us more deeply into the embodied world where God has chosen to meet us.
Our pets are supposed to make us better humans. When you live with an animal and you love that animal, it allows you to practice a range of skills; from attention and patience, to service and delight. They force us to adapt when our expectations aren’t met. Pets teach us to receive affection as well as how to care for the vulnerable. And eventually, since we almost always outlive our pets, they teach us how to grieve.
It’s a gift to love and be loved by an animal. I would argue that caring for Molly Moon has made me a better human, more capable of tending God’s world.
At the 11am service today, we are blessing all the animals; the dogs on leashes, the cats in carriers, the snakes and lizards in bins, and the stuffed animals. But think about it. We bring our pets to be blessed by God. But I think these pets have already blessed us by their presence.