Today’s dogryu: Walking with Friends
Love’s many versions
await your return – they know
we need each other
Ponce
Freon
The Supreme
Jun 29 – Walking with Friends
3 Replies
Author Archives: Patrick Cole
Jun 28 – One Week Later
Zorro and me a few months back
Today’s dogryu: One Week Later
miss you so, Zorro
grateful for the time we had
still holding you close
I return to Stray Rescue today to walk some big dogs. Plenty of dogs looking for love and attention. The feelings are mutual.
In his book HOW TO LIVE WHEN A LOVED ONE DIES, Thich Nhat Hanh explains:
“Letting Emotions Flow Through You
Do not be afraid of your painful feelings and difficult emotions. If we try to repress our painful feelings, we create a lack of circulation in our psyche which can lead to depression or other psychological problems. Just as the body needs good circulation of the blood to remain healthy, we also need good psychological circulation. …
Mindfulness is the blood of our psyche. Like the blood in the body, it has the power to eliminate toxins and heal our pain. Every time our pain is embraced by mindfulness, it loses some of its strength; it becomes weaker each time. …
When mindfulness circulates in our consciousness, we begin to experience well-being. We needn’t be afraid of our pain when we know that our mindfulness is also there, ready to embrace and transform it.” p.56
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667266/how-to-live-when-a-loved-one-dies-by-thich-nhat-hanh
A Final Goodbye with Zorro
A final goodbye in the consolation room
After 8 days of not eating and 5 days of medical tests and treatment, I made the decision not to continue medical intervention, based on consultation with multiple medical advisors.
Zorro, a 12-year-old male Chihuahua, had an enlarged kidney, gallbladder, liver and pancreas with multiple cysts attached. The doctors said the combination of his age, size and multiple organs involved indicated that further treatment would be too intrusive and not likely to make a difference anyway.
Goodbye dear fur friend.
As Will Rogers reportedly said:
The Messiness of Life by Terry Hershey
Zorro not feeling well (picture taken by me, also not feeling well)
Today, June 21, 2023, I will be asked to decide on end-of-life procedures for my beloved 12-year-old male Chihuahua. To say I am sad cannot express how low I feel.
As an animal chaplain, I have taken a vow to “honor animal lives and heal human hearts.” Today, I will honor Zorro and someday, maybe not today, I will heal my own heart. I know I will need help to do this and I’m uncomfortable asking for help. Giving help is easier for me than asking for it or even accepting it when it is offered.
Life is messy and Terry Hershey’s message below is especially meaningful for me today.
The Messiness of Life
Messiness exposes vulnerability. I will admit, vulnerability is not my strong suit. I do prefer self-sufficiency. And rising above. And yet, self-reliance sounds laudable, but can be an obstacle, because it is difficult to say the words “help” or “thank you.” So, here’s the good news: There is power in embracing vulnerability. And vulnerability never exempts us from the sacrament of the present. Because vulnerability allows us to rest in that touch, that blessing.
—from the book This Is the Life: Mindfulness, Finding Grace, and the Power of the Present Moment
by Terry Hershey
I Am Imperfect – Daily Stoic
Below is another wise reminder from Ryan Holiday who quotes Gandhi, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius on how best to handle critiscim: own our imperfection.
Check out Holiday’s posts and other great offerings at https://dailystoic.com/how-to-not-be-afraid-of-criticism/ and dailystoic.com
How To Not Be Afraid of Criticism
No one likes to be found at fault. In fact, this is what many of us walk around fearing–that we’ll be exposed as imposters, we’ll be put on the spot in front of people, we’ll have to admit error. This makes us defensive, it makes us play it safe, and in some cases, it even makes us dishonest.
It’s a cure, you could say, that’s worse than the disease.
Gandhi, once being interviewed by a reporter, dispensed with all that. “I am very imperfect,” he said. “Before you are gone you will have discovered a hundred of my faults and if you don’t, I will help you to see them.” Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps it was because he knew that as a leader, egotism and an outsized sense of one’s abilities was dangerous and destructive. Perhaps he was inoculating himself against the fear in advance–taking away the power of the reporter to control Gandhi’s fate by disclosing up front what might otherwise be investigated (or even misconstrued).
There is a line from Epictetus who, after being criticized, joked “Yes, and he doesn’t know the half of it, because he could have said more.” It’s not that Epictetus had a bunch of bodies buried somewhere, it was that he had also inoculated himself against criticism by being more aware of his flaws–and more concerned about addressing them–than even his enemies.
Why should we be afraid of criticism? As Marcus Aurelius writes, if that criticism is correct and we are in error then the person criticizing us has done us a favor by correcting it. If they are wrong, what do we care? More likely, if we are doing our job right, we should already be well aware of the issue that people are raising and already be fixing it. We should have no sense of ourselves as perfect or above critique. Nor should we be so fragile and vulnerable as to not be able to bear being disliked or disagreed with.
Jun 15 – 3 + 1 = JOY
I am the luckiest man in the universe and this week I walked three new dogs and one lovable repeater. Pictured below are Elmers, Manifest, Fury (all new to me) and The Supreme (a personal BFFF).
Today’s puppyru: 3 + 1 = JOY
how lucky am i
to meet and breathe air with you
truly JOY divine
All pictures taken by Stray Rescue of STL
Jun 12 – David Gerken’s “4 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes”
These 4 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes Are A Manual For Life
Change Your Mind Change Your Life
4 min read
Thich Nhat Hanh is a 93 year old Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has been one of the most influential spiritual leaders on earth for the past fifty years. Here’s how far back he goes: Martin Luther King nominated him for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Vietnam War.
He is best known for his beautiful, simple teachings about mindfulness. In that vein, here are four quotes of his that will help you become a better, happier human being.
1. “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
That’s it. Just be there. All of you. Listening. With no agenda. Just 100% present. With your spouse. Your kids. Your coworkers. Your friends.
Thich Nhat Hanh is right on the money here. Being present is the deepest gift we can bestow on anybody.
Eckhart Tolle, another of my favorite spiritual teachers, states the very same thing.
2. “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don’t try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.”
I am the father of 12, 10 and 4 year old kids and if I had to pick the number one thing I want to teach them it would be the sentiment behind this quote. Don’t fight yourself. Be yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it in the most positive way: “Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”
There is, however, one vital point on this subject of self-acceptance that I wish TNH, Emerson and others would emphasize, which is this: For most people, it takes courage.
Example: If your father is a macho ex-Marine, it takes courage to follow your inner compass that’s telling you to become a male ballet dancer.
Our families, our friends and society all pressure us to do what they think we should do. We have to summon the courage to say to all of them: “Sorry, but I’m the one living in here. I know what’s best for me and I need you to respect that.”
3. “The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”
The first quote was about presence being the best thing we can do for others. This quote is about how presence is the best thing we can do for ourselves.
So much suffering in the world is caused by our worrying about the future. And what does worrying do? It takes us out of the present moment and makes us feel miserable.
We worry about the future and turn our backs on the present moment because we feel if we don’t, our future will be bleak. Well, how about this for an idea? If you’re worrying about having enough money to pay the rent, don’t spend your moments worrying about it. Place your moment to moment attention on making enough money to pay the rent.
But again, there is this insidious feeling in so many of us that worries that if we don’t worry things won’t work out. As if worrying will pay dividends for us. It’s crazy. And it’s not true.
What I’ve tried to do the past several years is live by the motto, “Be present and trust in life.” Because it does take a leap of faith to just say to yourself, “Screw it. I’m going to give everything I have to the present moments of my life and let the chips fall where they may.”
I can tell you that it’s definitely working for me and I know of nobody who truly lives life in the moment who has been ill-served by doing so. We just need the courage to toss the yoke of worrying by the wayside.
4. “Your breathing should flow gracefully, like a river, like a watersnake crossing the water, and not like a chain of rugged mountains or the gallop of a horse…Each time we find ourselves dispersed and find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.”
This one sums up the ultra-simple mindfulness technique for re-orienting ourselves after we’ve been knocked off track: We just come back to our breath.
I’m teaching a meditation and mindfulness course right now and my class is practicing this very technique this week. So simple, yet so powerful.
How do you do it? Example: You’re driving home after a tough day at work when the car behind you leans on the horn for five seconds because you didn’t signal when you changed into their lane; a minute later your teenage daughter calls and yells at you for not being home on time.
What do you do? At the next red light you stop. Close your eyes. Find your breath. Then start following it. Long, slow breaths. Just for a minute or so. When you open your eyes you’ll feel better and back on track.
If you don’t do this? There’s a good chance you’ll let these two irritating incidents affect your mood for the rest of the evening.
Finally, do yourself a favor and watch this interview with Oprah and Thich Nhat Hanh. The man just exudes goodness.
Written by David Gerken
Jun 11 – Surrender to Your Heart’s Desire
One of many influences toward my upcoming Animal Chaplaincy ordination is St. Francis of Assisi. Below is a repost from a recent meditation available at https://www.franciscanmedia.org/minute-meditations/surrender-to-your-hearts-desire/
Surrender to Your Heart’s Desire
What keeps us from seeking our soul’s deepest desire? Most often it is the ego and its fear of annihilation.
Few of us have the courage to pray as St. Francis did — “Who are you, O God? And who am I?”—because we don’t really want to know the answer. While our souls long for intimate unions with God, unions in which we can no longer distinguish our deepest selves from the Divine, our ego selves understand the price of these unions: the loss of our hard-fought external identities.
We’ve spent our entire lives crafting an identity to present to the world, and our egos are terrified at the prospect of that identity being consumed in the flame of God’s great love. For if we follow our soul’s desire, we will be left standing defenseless and out of control, which is precisely where we need to be to experience the sheer delight and the richness of God’s consuming love for us.
The Good News for our souls is that the fire of God’s love is relentless and will eventually break through our well-formed heat shields. When that happens, we too will become a fire of consuming love that draws in everyone around us.
Loving and irresistible God, you draw me into your flame of love, and yet I resist. I pray for the courage to surrender my whole self to you, as St. Francis did, so that, like Francis, I might experience the joy of a life without control, a life that brings the unexpected delights of sweet surrender.
Loving God, help me to stop counting the costs and to overcome my fear of loss, so that through your consuming love I may find my true self, transformed by love, ready to share that experience of pure joy through loving service to the world around me.
—from the book Eucharistic Adoration: Reflections in the Franciscan Tradition
by Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
Repost of The Theology of a Poet
Many thanks to Jim Van Vurst for his homage to Emily Dickinson below. And check out the Franciscan Spirit Blog also referenced.
Notes from a Friar: The Theology of a Poet
I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I do have a favorite author and one who is deeply appreciated by many: Emily Dickinson. She lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, in the latter part of the 19th century. She was shy and lived a very reclusive life. During her 55 years, she wrote over 1,500 poems which were filled with simple wisdom. Two examples of such wisdom: “Old age comes on suddenly, not gradually as it thought” and “Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”
Only a few dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime. When she died, her family found hundreds more hidden all over her room and throughout the house. I have found two of her poems supremely thoughtful. In fact, I frequently quote them in my funeral homilies. The first one I use is “I Never Saw a Moor.”
“I never saw a moor; I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks and what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God nor visited in heaven,
Yet, certain am I of the spot, as if the chart were given.”
Deep Truths
I catch people smiling when they hear Dickinson’s words because they touch on a truth that is in every believer’s heart. Isn’t it true that we’ve never seen heaven or had an audible conversations with God? Yet, as a people of faith, are we not certain of that heavenly “spot” as if we had a very map in front of us?
If you argued with a nonbeliever who begged you to prove there was an eternal destiny, you might find yourself fumbling for Scripture passages to prove heaven to him. But I suspect after all the Scripture passages we might quote, what would likely make the nonbeliever think more deeply would be a line from one of Dickinson’s poems: “I’m certain of that spot; it’s like I have a map right in front of me.”
There is another poem she wrote that startles with its simple truth.
“Because I could not stop for Death–
He kindly stopped for me–
The Carriage held but just Ourselves–
And Immortality.”
While most of us secretly hope for a peaceful death with loved ones surrounding us, for the majority, it is not we who “stop to die,” but death which stops for us. And within that carriage, in the seat across from us, sits immortality, with a lovely smile.
What I see in this poem is really a basic truth of faith. Once God gives life, it never ends. It can’t end because our lives are a sharing in the eternal life of God. The moment of death is just the last piece of mosaic that completes the story of our life’s journey. And every moment of that journey has been accompanied by a loving and providential God.
Dickinson said that she never went to church. She said that the birds were her choir and the sky her cathedral vault. But one thing is quite certain: She was a woman of deep faith.
Waiting for You
Today’s pupryu: Waiting for You
rescued and ready
to love you if you want me –
I’m waiting for you
I love walking dogs; especially the beautiful animals at Stray Rescue of STL. Yet, I confess, there’s a sadness at times when you realize you’re walking some of the same animals, week after week, who would love to become someone’s best friend.
Sure, no dog is a perfect for everyone just like no human is a perfect fit for everyone. Maybe, just maybe, your perfect fit is at your local rescue shelter.
Here are three of the four dogs I walked yesterday.
The Supreme, nearly 5-yr-old 50lb+ female Terrier Mix who prefers to be an only dog.
Tic Tac, 7-yr-old, 50lb+ female Terrier – OK with kids and other mellow dogs; not cats.
L.O.T.I. (Luck of the Irish), 3-yr-old, 50lb+ female Terrier. Gorgeous dog with a pleasant personality.
A fourth dog, Skidmore, is a young Plott Hound/Shepherd mix. I will collect a picture next week if he’s still there. Fingers crossed he’s not because he’s been adopted.
Life Matters 