Holy Week thoughts about the Atonement

What follows is a somewhat rude post about the Atonement. Please be warned: whatever your point of view, you might be offended at some point if you keep reading. Also note that, although it deals with the theology of salvation, it doesn't tackle the question of Christian exclusivity vs. pluralism. I think I'll have something to write about that issue in a future post, but for the record, I'm a pluralist. Anyway, without further ado:

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So it's Holy Week. It's the annual week-long commemoration of Jesus' last week of human life. Also, there's this movie out, which you may have heard about, which is a graphic (some would say pornographic) depiction of Jesus' last hours of human life. Like many Christians, I found the movie both moving and thought-provoking. I find Holy Week, and its services, much the same.

So it's Holy Week, and I've been thinking about the Doctrine of the Atonement. Actually, there are a whole set of intimately connected theological issues here. At the broadest level, there's the Gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ. Just what is that Good News? Most Christians would say that a large (perhaps the central) part of that Good News is "Salvation". So what is Salvation? Here, it starts to get complicated.

I've actually been thinking about this stuff since I read an article in the Christmas 2003 edition of the Sewanee Theological review. The article, by Ellen T. Charry, is called "On Being an Anglo-Catholic". Among other things, Ms. Charry discusses an ancient controversy regarding the nature of salvation. The theological term for salvation talk is "soteriology", and the two main points of view she discusses are "participation soteriology" (favored by the Greek Orthodox churches and certain prominent Anglican theologians of the past and present) and "atonement soteriology" (favored by the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Churches, and certain prominent Anglican theologians of the past and present). She compares participation soteriology to being pickled--salvation is a slow, ongoing process of "participation in and union with God." Atonement soteriology is being toasted like a Pop-Tart. Christ paid the price for us, and once we opt in to that atonement, "pop!" we're saved.

OK. I personally think that's a bit of a false dichotomy. Whatever the positions have historically been called, the contrast she's drawing is really between a salvation envisioned as immediate and complete, and one envisioned as gradual and growing. The pickle/Pop Tart analogy is apt, but it seems to me that there's room for a doctrine of Atonement (whatever that is--I'll get to it in a minute) in so-called "participation soteriology" if Christ in some way did something to make possible the gradual pickling of all those pickles. Likewise, all those "atonement soteriology" Pop-Tarts, having been immediately and completely toasted, are surely thought to participate in and be in union with God. So I'll just say that I guess I mostly favor the pickles, and move on to a discussion of Atonement, with the claim that it's an important doctrine whether you smell of vinegar or--er--whatever that stuff is on Pop-Tarts.

So anyway, about this so-called Atonement: If indeed God and Jesus did something 2000 years ago to make possible what Christians call salvation, how does that work, exactly? There's an excellent article on this subject in this week's Time magazine (of all places) which lays out three broad positions. The first speaks of the Atonement as a victory of Good over Evil: a mysterious, pivotal change in the universal balance of power and the beginning of the end for the Devil--a point of view current among the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. The second, "substitutionary atonement", favored historically in the Western churches (Catholic and Protestant) and probably the most familiar formulation of the doctrine of atonement in the West, speaks of Christ's death on the cross as paying in full a debt owed to God the Father by all humans for our sins. This is the main point of view of that movie I mentioned. The third, "exemplary atonement", holds that the significance of Jesus' life, suffering, and death is mainly as an example to us of an ideal life of humility, goodness, love, and sacrifice.

The Time article goes on to say that it's extremely common among modern Christians to mix and match among these theories. Well, I certainly do. I generally find the theology of substitutionary atonement abhorrent. But the other two points of view have a tendency to de-emphasize the importance of the events of Good Friday. (If you don't know what those were, and you have a strong stomach, you can find out at your local multiplex.) I certainly agree with the exemplary model as far as it goes, but I believe that there's more to Jesus than that.

I guess my point of view is closest to the Orthodox position--something mysterious and of universal significance happened when Jesus suffered and died. It wasn't that an angry Father said, "Well, OK, somebody paid the blood penalty for all those sins that were pissing me off, so I guess I'll stop sending everybody to Hell. Too bad it had to be the boy." For me, the most moving faith statement in the Time article was from an Anglican preacher named John Stott, who said "In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?"

Yes, that's it exactly. God, as Jesus, did something remarkable in the Incarnation: he became fully human. Somehow, mysteriously, this bridged a gap that humans, without divine intervention, can't bridge. If you've ever seen an evangelical tract, it probably had a diagram with God up at the top, humans down below, and a gap between them. Then it had the same diagram again, but this time with a cross reaching down from heaven and bridging that gap. At least, every tract I've ever seen, from those creepy Jack Chick ones to more mainstream jobs, had diagrams like that.

So God in Jesus did something special by becoming fully human: he made it possible for the alienation that is our normal state to be overcome, and for us to be in union with God. I believe that, and am content to leave the details of that mystery--well--mysterious. But what does this mean, to be fully human? The Buddha had an answer to that: it means to suffer. Pain, anguish, and suffering are a central part of human life. To be fully human is to experience that. We suffer, and in the Passion of Jesus Christ, God demonstrated that he/she suffers too, right along with us. How could one worship a God who is immune to pain? How could one reach out, in our deepest, darkest anguish, to a God who doesn't--couldn't--understand? In addition to the mysterious universal sea change that I believe was accomplished via the Incarnation and Atonement, in addition to the example offered by the life and sacrifice of Christ, the events of the Passion also provide Christians with a unique comfort--a God who, in the dark night of our souls when we need to reach out for consolation and to ease our pain, has been there.

LifeKeys

I also just finished a course called "LifeKeys" which is sort of a "get to know yourself" course. Readers of this blog are no doubt eager to get to know me (for I am most humble, and therefore loved by all). ;-)

Anyway, here are my LifeKeys:

Life Gifts / Talents (General Occupational Themes from the Strong Interest Inventory; top 10)

General profile: ISC (Investigative/Social/Conventional)

Theorizing
Research
Organization
Working with others
Problem solving
Inventing
Listening and facilitating
Serving others
Writing
Computers

Spiritual Gifts (top 5)

Faith
Teaching
Mercy
Administration
Evangelism
(Runners up: Knowledge, Hospitality)

Personality Type (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)

INFJ (Introvert/iNtuitive/Feeling/Judging)

Values (top 8)

Compassion
Contribution
Tolerance
Peace
Cooperation
Friendship
Personal development
Creativity

Passions

Justice and opportunity – health care, education
Peace and nonviolence
Freedom of speech and religion

Personal creed

I've been doing some work on a personal creed for my EFM (education for Ministry) class. For the record, here's what I've got so far. Definitely a work in progress. I owe big thanks to my fellow EFMers for most of the thoughts on the last four topics (Creation, Sin, Judgement, and Redemption). The (T, A, C) stuff has to do with the four-source theological reflection methodology taught in EFM, and the letters indicate what factors I think contributed to my beliefs on those topics. T = tradition; A = action (that is, personal experience); C = culture (the one I was brought up in).

I believe that Jesus Christ is:
- Risen, meaning alive in a real and powerful way, despite having lived and died nearly 2000 years ago. That Christ is risen means that He is available to today's Christians as their living Lord and savior, and indeed that He invites us into an ongoing, vital, life-giving relationship with Him. (T, A)
- Fully human, meaning human in every way. I believe Jesus lived, loved, struggled, doubted, experienced the full range of human emotions, suffered, and died, just as any of us do. I believe that His suffering (no more or less than His human joy) was a necessary part of being fully human, since suffering is an intrinsic part of the experience of human life. (T, C)
- Fully divine, meaning one with God in an ineffably profound way, so much so that to speak of Him as the second person of a Trinity, along with God the Creator and God the Holy Spirit, is an authentic and deeply revelatory metaphor for describing who God is. Further, His suffering (no more or less than His joy) is an indispensable pointer to important truths about who God is: that suffering is also an intrinsic part of God's identity. (T, A)
- The Way, the Truth, the (Bread of) Life, and the Light of the World. (T, A)

I believe that God the Creator is:
- The Mother/Father/Creator/Source of the universe, all things, and all individual creatures. The Ground of Being. (T, C)
- Love. (See below.) (T, A)
- A bestower of boundless unearned grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, and redemption. (T, A)

I believe that the Holy Spirit is:
- God within us. (T, A)
- The bestower of spiritual gifts giving us the power to work for God's purposes in otherwise impossible ways. (T, A)
- Within us as Fire, or as Breath, or as Living Water according to our need. (T, A)
- The Holy Comforter. (T, A)

I believe that the Love is:
- Patient and kind, not jealous, conceited, proud, ill-mannered, selfish, or irritable. Forgetful of wrongs, unhappy with evil, happy with the truth. Undefeatable and unfailing. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) (T, A)
- Universal and all-forgiving, yet demanding and desiring that the beloved grow in faith, hope, love, righteousness, and wholeness. (T, A)

I believe that humankind is:
- A complicated creature. (T, C, A)
- Created in the image of God, and therefore, through the grace of God, capable of growing toward God in all the ways noted above. (T, C, A)
- An animal with a strong propensity toward temptation and evil, sins committed against God, fellow creatures, and self. (T, C, A)

I believe that creation is:
- The gift of God's continuing activity to renew the world.
- Collaborative, meaning that through God's grace, we can participate in the work of creation.
- Good and miraculous, in God's image.
- Evolving.

I believe that sin is:
- A turning away from God that separates or alienates a person from God.
- Rejection of God's unconditional love.
- Idolatry - conscious or unconscious, meaning putting something that is not God in the place of God.

I believe that judgment is:
- God's assessment of the genuineness of our attempt to live in a way that is pleasing to Him.
- God's business - Jesus commanded that we not judge one another.
- The result or consequences of our behavior toward God and creation.

I believe that redemption is:
- God's act to restore the fullness of His relationship to us.
- Assented to by the individual human, but not earned.
- Being forgiven.

"Pray, then, in this way"

I remember, when I was young, being told that when Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer, he was giving us a model for prayer, and--in the opinion of the person who told me this--he (Jesus) would have been somewhat exasperated by the way we carved the words into stone (so to speak), institutionalized them, and now repeat them word for word, by rote, nearly every time we pray. Kind of like Brian in Monty Python’s Life of Brian standing on the balcony and trying to teach people to think for themselves. “You are all individuals!” “We are all individuals!” “I’m not!” :-)

Anyway, whether or not what this person said is true (and I’m not trying to withhold names to protect the guilty, I just don’t remember who told me this) is certainly a matter of opinion. The record of the giving of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s Gospel certainly reads to me like my forgotten teacher was right; on the other hand, the one in Luke sounds more like the establishment of something specific. Since we are blessed with two Gospel records of the event, I choose to believe that both interpretations are true: Jesus would approve of our use of his exact words (translated, etc., of course) in our daily prayer, but I think he would also approve of our constructing our own prayers along the same lines.

I was reminded of this teaching from my youth when listening to a two-tape recording of a retreat led by Martin Smith, SSJE, whom Mother Blair recently brought to the church for one of our Thursday-evening lectures. He talked about thinking (and praying) about God’s will in terms of “what God yearns for”, specifically in the context of the Lord’s Prayer. I was really inspired by those tapes as a whole, and this idea, combined with my remembered instruction about the Our Father being a model for prayer, led me to work on my own version of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s sort of a really, really loose translation (not that I know anything about Biblical Greek), but it’s more of a “what the Lord’s Prayer means to me.” Credit for the language about yearning goes to Martin Smith, and credit for the core prayer itself, of course, is the Lord’s. The cheapening of the profundity of the original is entirely my own doing, however unintentional.

So, here it is. I hope nobody finds this offensive. I’m certainly not trying to improve on the Our Father—heaven forbid—I’m just trying to pray in the way Jesus taught us, using words that are particularly meaningful to me.

“Pray, then, in this way”

Our beloved Mother-Father,
Not a thing, but the source of all things,
That which points to You is set apart and adored.

May we also come to yearn for
The world that You yearn for,
And may that world become our reality.

Help us to find what we really need today,
And when we do wrong, don’t hold it against us.
Likewise, we won’t hold it against our brother or sister who wrongs us.

Help us to avoid that which will get us in trouble,
And when we do get in trouble, lead us safely home.

Order and Chaos

Well, I had an assignment for my Education for Ministry class to write a short essay on order and chaos. And I've been thinking a lot (as I mentioned) about evolution and revolution in reference to the actions of the Episcopal Church's General Convention in August, and thought I might post something to the blog about it. So: the proverbial two birds are now kaput. The stone follows:

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Chaos: Hurricane Isabel blows through. Trees down. Power out for five days. Food spoiling in the fridge. No drinkable water.

Order: Blessed power. Blessed clean water. Life goes back to normal. Thank God.

Chaos: Every weekend in August, picking up our lives and driving for most of a day each way, with or without dogs, to visit friends and family in other states. Exhausting, but exhilarating and richly rewarding.

Order: September. Ho-hum. Another day, another dollar. Work, eat, sleep; nothing much special going on.

Is order preferable to chaos? Depends on the order; depends on the chaos. Order is familiarity, security, stability, comfort. But it's also rigidity, inflexibility, boredom, totalitarianism. Chaos is danger, terrorism, bad news from the doctor. But it's also serendipity, variety, the surprise birthday party. Both are aspects of God's good creation, in all its variability.

We wouldn't want our lives to be dominated by chaos. For far too many of us, living in places torn by war and poverty, chaos is the dominant reality. But chaos is also change, and change is necessary, and good, and Godly. What we really need to strive for is not unrelieved order but balance. Balance between order and chaos; change that proceeds with due caution, to avoid tipping the apple cart and spinning us off into the void of no (or scarce) return.

The middle ground between stagnation (unyielding, uncaring order) and revolution (chaotic change that happens so quickly that the consequences are impossible to foresee) is evolutionary change. Those of us who support change in our institutions, be they governmental, corporate, or ecclesiastical, need to realize that uncontrolled change can be just as harmful as no change at all, if not more so. The ends do not justify the means. This is as true for the freedom fighter as it is for the oppressor. One reason for this is that if the chosen means are uncontrolled and excessively chaotic, the ends actually reached may be very different from those envisioned.

These are some of the thoughts I've been kicking around since the Episcopal Church's General Convention in August, 2003. Let me be clear: I strongly support the full equality of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in all of our institutions, including the Church. I think gay people should be ordained. I think they should be allowed to marry in the eyes of both church and state. But I also think that change needs to be evolutionary, not revolutionary, or God only knows what the consequences might be.

Only time will tell what the effects of these actions will be for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and on faithful Christians of every opinion, every sexual orientation. Do I think we'll get through this? I do. And though I know that change is no less necessary because it is painful, I am sorry for the pain that the Church is feeling over this. Most of all, I wonder if this hurricane of our own creation could have been more of a mere squall if we'd proceeded with due respect for the delicate balance between order and chaos.

If life were black and white, I'd go looking for Tobey and Reese

By the way, I've learned, since the ECUSA General Convention and its decisions that I was so thrilled about, that things are rather more complicated than I thought. I think a lot of formerly naive Episcopalians (like me) have had a lot to think about since the first week of August, as we've watched our church threaten to come apart at the seams. I've certainly not changed my basic position, but I think I may have some words to put in this blog about evolution and revolution. Later. Also, sorry for falling off the face of the earth for two months! August was full of travel, and September was full of recovery from all that travel. :-)

And Eleanor too

I think I stated earlier in this blog that George W. Bush is an Episcopalian. Turns out I was mistaken. George H. W. is an Episcopalian; George W. is a Methodist. I'm actually somewhat relieved. I have a certain amount of respect for Bush the Elder. Not complete respect, but some. But the Methodists can have Little Shrub. :-) FDR was an Episcopalian. :-D

Next, Hans and Franz pump up politics in Duluth

Yay! Arnie won! I'm so glad I'm not a Californian.

World Waffling Federation

Hey, do ya think Governer Arnold and Governor Jesse will wrestle at the National Governors Association meetings? That would be so cool!

News flash: blessing permitted in church

And Episcopal churches are also officially allowed to bless same-sex unions now, although the national church won't be developing an official liturgy for that ceremony. Yet. Yay!

:-D

Have I mentioned that I'm very proud of my church? :-D

Congratulations, Bishop Robinson!

Yes! He's been approved! News story here.

Shake rattle and roll

I'm not sure what I read, a whole bunch of posts back, to make me think the Episcopal Church had already ordained our first openly gay Bishop, because we're actually right in the midst of controversy over the issue of his election, and it's all exciting-like. Stay tuned. The Rector of my church is at the convention and is returning this Sunday to preach, so maybe he'll say a word about it.

Sometimes there's a big gap between mentions of us in the Post

Tina (my wife, for those of you who know me only through my body of work ;-) said of this blog: "I read it occasionally to find out what's going on in my life." Ha!

Humans and their domiciles

I should fill in my faithful readers: No kids. Not the homo sapiens kind. Not for at least a year. We've told the county folks.

In other news, we're looking into buying a house. Just seems like the time, economy-wise. We've not got down payment money, but our friend Shobha has convinced me that we might not need it. So we're investigating. Stay tuned.

Oh, and tomorrow I become a man. ;-)

Silly postmodern drivel

Google tells me that a search for "terminator matrix invisibles zen art motorcycle maintenance" yields no hits. Must correct that. The Terminator films, the Matrix films, the Invisibles comic book series, and the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance have an awful lot to do with each other, thematically. Something about the rationalistic, mechanistic, binary, good/bad black/white true/false establishment mindset of our culture and how all good lil' Messiahs must fight against it. Or some such rot.

Divination is silly, but homiletics is fun

So I've been studying magical (magickal) symbol systems a little bit--like the Tarot and the Sefirot of the Kabbalah. For a long time I've been fascinated by symbols and their combinations into things like patterns and stories. I think in our rational, classical-Greek-influenced culture, we devalue symbols and stories. "That's just a story." "That's a myth." "She was only speaking metaphorically." It's related to the situation Robert Pirsig talks a lot about, the triumph of reason over value in our culture. We think that there's something called objective reality on the one hand, and then there are symbols and stories and myths that at best can point at that objective reality, but more often misrepresent or distort it. The Buddha seems to have felt that those symbols and patterns we form in our minds (and by extension, with our mouths, or with pens, computers, or Tarot cards) are reality. There is no other. Everything is empty of intrinsic existence.

I'm more with the Buddha than the Greeks on this one, although I tend to believe that it is valid to talk about objective reality, insofar as there's this phenomomen in which our subjective realities seem to agree with each other to an awfully great extent, by and large. And I also think that it's necessary to remember that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. This seems to be true whether or not the moon exists in some realm of objective realness. My point is simply that the finger is important. Without it, you'd never notice the moon. So symbols and patterns and stories are important. They're our way of processing and understanding--as well as communicating--both "reality" (whatever that is) and our internal thoughts, feelings, and imagination.

So they fascinate me, especially symbolic systems with what the Tibetans call "lineage"--meaning they go back far enough that people have worked a lot of the bugs out. It's interesting to do a Tarot reading and use the pictures on the cards to tell a story about the topic you're interested in--a story that you wouldn't have otherwise told, and which may make you think about the situation in a way you otherwise would have missed. I'm very skeptical that magickal symbolism can be used to influence or discover things about reality or other people (living or dead), or to foretell the future. I also don't particularly think that one's subconscious mind influences which cards come up in any mysterious way. I'm more interested in the other way around--the influence the cards have on your subconscious (and conscious) mind. There's power in performing symbolic acts (Christians call them Sacraments) and in telling stories--the power to change and broaden your mind. Nothing more (I think), and nothing less. But IMHO, that's a pretty big thing.

All right, getting down off the philosphical soapbox before somebody kicks my ass down.

Helping others

Over the past week, we've become involved in mission activities through our church (in our church, mission means volunteer work on behalf of those in need, not proselytizing). We went to a meeting of the Committee for Helping Others (CHO) on Tuesday, and by Saturday morning I was helping CHO move furniture (picking up donations from the generous, dropping them off for the needy) while Tina was staffing the CHO table at the local farmers' market, helping spread the word. And Sunday morning we were passing out empty grocery bags before and after church, inviting folks to bring them back full next week for the food pantry of another mission organization, called FACETS. It's been fun.

The Freakin' Hilarious Dog Wrangling Story

OK, so today I had a day off from work. Tina and I wanted to bring the bunnies in today, because it was really freakin' hot outside. Logistics to keep in mind: bunnies can't come in contact with dogs, as dogs will eat bunnies. Bunnies can't come in contact with each other, because then we'd have more bunnies. And we're full up, thank you very much.

So when I woke up, I put one bunny in the kids' room. Check. Other bunny downstairs. Check. Both doors closed. Check, check.

Around lunch time, I wanted to go have lunch with Tina and do some shopping. Since Blade (this dog) has a condition that makes him drink and pee a lot, when leaving the house for any length of time, the dogs have to be either outside or downstairs, where the floors aren't carpeted. And the rescue folks from whom we got Blade and Max have a rule against leaving the dogs outside, besides which, as I mentioned, it was really freakin' hot today. So the dogs had to go downstairs. So pet shuffling was in order.

A bit I forgot to mention: this morning, Max grabbed one of Tina's really cool hand-carved wooden scoops (which we use to scoop pet food) and chewed it to bits. I figured this was his way of saying "I require chew toys." OK. So I run out to Safeway and get two big rawhide bones for Max and Blade, and a smaller one for Machig. I bring them home, and Machig's reaction is "Oh boy! A bone!" Max's reaction is "Keep that thing away from me! It's poison! I know it!" Blade's reaction is HA HA HA HA... All your bone are belong to me!. So he grabs both his and Max's bones and hides with them behind the couch.

Flash forward again: it's noon, and I need to get the bunny out of the basement and the dogs into the basement. (If you haven't already noticed, there's striking similarity between a typical day in our house and the classic farmer, fox, goose, and grain logic puzzle.) So I call the dogs and ask them to go outside (into the fenced backyard, I should perhaps mention). They need a pee break before they go into the basement, and I also need them out of the way for bunny-moving. One dog (Machig)--out the door, no problem. Max, as per usual, comes when called, but stops at the back door and looks at me like "Why do you want me to go out there? There are killer squirrels out there, right? This is your way of taking me out of the picture, isn't it?" However, if I actually go outside first and call him, he comes. Two dogs, check.

"Blade!" No luck. Go looking for Blade. He's like Smaug sitting on his hoard. Behind the couch, with HIS two bones, and not going anywhere. Hmm.

So I thinks, "Maybe he's pretty stupid. Maybe he can be lured away from his hoard by the promise of something alse to add to it." So I grab Machig's bone (which she dropped before heading outside) and try to lure him away with it. It's working! But I get too close. Now his hoard consists of three bones. One in his mouth, and two that he's actully laying his great white bulk down on. Like Smaug. And if I reach for any of them, he growls at me. Somebody here was pretty stupid, but it wasn't Blade.

I think about it. "You're not budging away from those bones, no-how, right?" "Grr." OK, if he's not budging, then I can move the bunny without worrying about him, probably. So I do. Bunny's now in the bathroom. Door's closed. Check.

Now I have to get all three dogs downstairs. Machig will be no problem. Max is terrified of the basement, terrified of stairs, and doesn't trust me one wit. And King Snowball over there has no intention of moving.

I decide to try to solve the Blade problem first. I know that, although I fucked it up, the ploy of luring him away from his hoard with another treasure was working. So I grab a slim-jim-type rawhid treat and entice him with it. From a safe distance. It works; here he comes. Toss it down the cellar stairs, and there he goes, lumbering down after it. Close the door. Two to go.

I grab a leash, because I know it's the only effective method of getting Max into the cellar. I let Max and Machig in, hook up Max, and lead/call them to the cellar door. Now there's another problem. Blade has remembered the rest of his loot, and is on the other side of the door letting us know in no uncertain terms that he intends to go retrieve it right now, the moment I open the door.

So I open the door and manage to lead Max down and call Machig down without letting Blade out. But in order to pull it off and get back on the other side of the door myself without losing any pooches, I end up leaving the leash attached to Max's collar--and the phone's ringing. It's Tina. She's hungry. She wants to know when the hell I'm showing up for lunch.

I'll be leaving right away, as soon as I can get into the cellar again, unhook the leash from Max's collar and get out.

But Blade's still waiting on the other side of the door, pining loudly for his bones. And I have no doubt that Max is waiting there as well, since, as I mentioned, he's afraid of the cellar.

Ok, no problem. I grab the bones, and prepare to toss them down the cellar steps. Blade will go after them, I'll grab Max and unhook the leash, all will be well.

I open the door and toss the bones over the dogs' heads. Blade utterly fails to observe this, and makes a break for it. I grab him, but while I'm getting him back in the basement, Max makes good his escape.

I make a big mistake and let out an exclamation of frustration. This only confirms Max's deep suspicion that I'm the Antichrist. He takes off at top speed.

I close the door, with Blade and Machig on the other side of it, and go after Max. After realizing that I can corner him by closing my office door, I catch him. He's just about peeing his pants. I carefully, and with many soothing words, lead him back to the cellar and downstairs. Blade still hasn't realized where his bones are, and tries to escape, but I manage to get all three where I need them, sans leash.

The epilogue is this: this evening, Tina and I made the bunnies a permanent home with lots of room downstairs where it's cool, and on the other side of a hard door from the dogs. So less bunny shuffling should be necessary in the future.

Yeah, we need more dependents. Right.

Temporary Foster Scaredy-Dog Max

Oh, and we have a new dog. No, another one. Right.

He's a temporary foster dog, just until after the 4th of July weekend. I swear to God. After the 4th, either he goes or Tina goes.

His name is Max, and to say he's afraid of his own shadow would be to imply that his shadow has some special status that it doesn't have; he's afraid of everything. We think he must have been abused, which is pretty unthinkable, because he's such a sweet-natured guy. He's a big Shephard mix and he looks like a great big Rottweiler. He looks scary, in other words, but he's really completely the opposite. Scared.

He led us a merry chase last night, when I was a bonehead and accidentally let him out. We toured the neigborhood (broadly speaking; we saw many blocks) with me in the car, Max on the sidewalk, and Tina on the sidewalk behind him wearing nothing but a bathrobe. We eventually cornered him in somebody's back yard. Tina's pretty flabbergasted by my complete and utter lack of knowledge about how to catch an escaped animal. Now I know more.

Next post is a story that features Max as well as the other canines. Stay tuned.