her blindness and his ignorance

her deafness and his magical thinking

her dementia and his futility

our connection and our rescue

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Here are two different topics that totally connect for me.

First, Etta Pearl was the first rescue dog I adopted. Found near a dumpster, lost or abandoned, she needed and received help. Unfortunately, she was blind and deaf and very agitated. For some convoluted reason, I thought I was ready to take on this challenge.

I’ve since learned that there’s a term for when a rescue shelter wants to help an animal but knows they are extremely medically challenged AND they don’t want to hurt their statistics for being a “no-kill facility.” The term is outsourced euthanasia.

If a private individual adopts an animal and then proceeds with a vet-recommended end-of-life procedure, then the animal is “liberated” from their suffering AND the rescue shelter does not record the death on their records.

In Etta Pearl’s case, her extreme agitation led to obsessively walking in tight circles and biting anyone who tried to comfort or feed her. The vet said it was a clear case of canine cognitive dysfunction aka “doggie dementia.” My first rescue adoption lasted less than three weeks.

Second, is …

Richard Rohr‘s Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Forty-Eight: The Prophetic Path: Motivated by Love

It All Begins with Union
 
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
—Romans 8:38–39

This week we focus on people who call us to act out of loving union with God for the sake of others. Father Richard considers union with God as something that has already taken place, whether we experience it or not:

We are already in union with God! There is an absolute, eternal union between God and the soul of everything. At the deepest level, we are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) and “the whole creation … is being brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God” (Romans 8:21). The problem is Western religion has not taught us this. For most Christians that I’ve worked with as a priest, God is still separate and “out there.” Most people are still trying to secure God’s approval. Our ego over-emphasizes our individuality and separateness from God and others. We limited God’s redemption to the human species—and not very many individuals within that species! [1]

Daily contemplative prayer helps us rediscover our inherent union and learn how to abide in Presence, trusting that we are already good and safe in God. We don’t have to worry about our little private, separate, insecure self. Jesus taught, I am one with you and you are one with your neighbor and we are all one with God. That’s the gospel! That’s the whole point of Communion or Eucharist; we partake of the bread and wine until they convince us that we are in communion. It seems easier for God to convince bread and wine of their identity than to convince us.

Believe it or not, we’re not here to save our souls. That’s already been done once and for all—in Christ, through Christ, with Christ, and as Christ (see Ephesians 1:3–14). By God’s love, mercy, and grace, we are already the Body of Christ: the one universal body that has existed since the beginning of time. You and I are here for just a few decades, dancing on the stage of life, perhaps taking our autonomous selves far too seriously. That little and clearly imperfect self just cannot believe it could be a child of God. I hope the gospel frees us to live inside of a life that is larger than the one our small selves have imagined. The larger life of the Body of Christ cannot be taken from us. It is the very life of God which cannot be destroyed. [2]

As Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” [3]
 
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Emotional Sobriety: Rewiring Our Programs for “Happiness” (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2011), webcast. Available as MP3 audio download.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “There Is Only One Suffering; There Is Only One Happiness,” homily, September 13, 2015. 

[3] Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart, James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1973), 308. Rohr’s emphasis.