Won't You and Your Pets Join Animal Writes?

How would you like to have your pet’s photo and story at Sacred Ordinary? As my own dog Cookie’s life narrows in her 13^th year, she has become incredibly precious to me and I realize what a powerful teacher she has been for me over the years. I would like to honor her and all animals. Also, my spiritual director, Betsy Caprio from the Center for Sacred Psychology, recently gave me a hand-out called "Spiritual Lessons Our Animals Teach Us," from Matthew Fox’s “A Spirituality Named Compassion”. (I reprint it below.) It really made me think. 

What finally triggered this idea, however, was Kerredelune’s blog Beyond the Fields We Know. Her beloved dog Cassie, whose photo is below, is fading and she has written so poignantly about her. Her post refers to Cassie being her teacher--and I think all pet owners can relate to that. 

I haven’t worked out the logistics yet, but I think I’ll feature your pets one day a week in the main blog and I will add their photos to my photo albums. I'm going to call it "Animal Writes," with full credit to Eldonna at This is My Body, This is My Blood, for this title. Would you like to participate? Please send your story (500 words or less) and your photo(s) of your pets, living or passed over in 72 dpi JPG format. I would appreciate a cross link to Sacred Ordinary if you also post it on your blog. If your pet has taught you spiritual or life lessons, please include that. This should be fun and enlightnening and a way to honor all our pets. 

I had hoped to find a printed version of Matthew Fox's "Spiritual Lessons Animals Teach Us" on the Internet I could link to, but so far I haven’t. So, I typed it in for you below. It's long, but I hope it will be food for thought for you as it was for me. Just hit continue.

Spiritual Lessons Animals Teach Us

by Matthew Fox, excerpted from “A Spirituality Named Compassion,” 1979

1. That it is good to be an animal. Some of the happiest creatures I know are animals and they do not hesitate to demonstrate their joy at living.
2. Ecstasy without guilt. Animals can truly let go and let be and even celebrate without guilt feelings at “wasted time” or at letting their masks down. Indeed, they instruct us in realizing that intensity of living is more important than duration and in this sense they cure us of the platonic prejudice humans have that declares that eternity and length of duration must be the test of the goodness of things.
3. Play is an adult thing to do and needs no justifications.
4. The power and frequent adequacy of non-verbal communication. Animals are experts at the non-verbal—their language is mime, tone of voice and dance. And a truthful language it can be. Max Scheler comments of the meaning of a dog expressing “its joy by barking and wagging its tail, or a bird by twittering.” We have here “a universal grammar, valid for all languages of expression, and the ultimate basis of understanding for all forms of mime and pantomime among living creatures.”
5. Openness and sensitivity. There can be little doubt that animals have developed or not allowed to atrophy powers of identification and sensitivity that we humans have almost totally forgotten. Many a dog, for example, on entering a room will know if someone is depressed or sad and will act to do something about it. Here Scheler also comments: “In man generally, the instinct for specialized identification has atrophied more than in most animals, and has applied itself, morever, to very general patterns in the life of others, whereas in primitive peoples, children, dreamers, neurotics of a certain type, hypnotic subjects and in the exercise of the maternal instinct, there remains much greater residual capacities for identification than in the average adult product of modern civilization.” Because the sense of animals are so often so much more acute than ours, they reminds us of how limited our sense awareness often is and therefore they remind us of the need to continually expand our sense knowledge.
6. Beauty. Who cannot be caught up by the form of a seagull in flight, by the straight back of a proud dog, the graceful stride of a tiger, by the perfect musculature of a fine stallion? Beauty is not an appendage to human and spiritual living but of its very essence. Animals are here in part to grant glimpses of the grace of beauty. The beauty of the singing of birds is a kind of music in itself, as is the gurgling of a brook, the dashing of ocean waves against a rocky shore, the whistling of the wind among leafy trees. It has been proposed that “aesthetics may actually be a factor in evolution” of birds, for example, since “the females tend to chose the best singers and thereby help perpetuate the genes for musical talent.”
7. Sensuousness. Animals teach us that one can be sensual and spiritual at the same time. They know that abstractions by themselves, such as money for example, are not what living and ecstasy are about. I remember one time switching a dollar bill into my wallet and its dropping on the floor in front of my dog. He didn’t bat one of his white eyelashes and had it been a thousand dollar bill he would not have reacted either. Had I dropped the wallet, however, there would have been a great game of tug of war. Why is this? Because the wallet, containing some cowhide, still retains a semblance of sensuousness. God made it insofar as nature made the cow. Thus there is some fun and ecstasy to it. It is an end and not only a means. Money, however, whatever the denomination, is only a means and is therefore not what living and ecstasy are about. This same truth that animals remind us of is also taught by children since, as Freud pointed out, “Money is not an infantile wish.”
8. That climbing Jacob’s ladder is unnatural. Have you ever known an animal (other than the two-legged one) that liked to climb ladders? They know better. They know their place and our place is on the earth, eye to eye with the rest of the gifted creatures of the land and sea. Why should animals climb ladders when everything they need the Creator has put on earth? I once saw a bear climb a staircase in a circus when men made him do so. He was so afraid and so not-at-home that when he got to the top stair tht there, in front of us all, he peed from fright and discomfort. The audience laughed at this, but the bear knew: there was nothing at the top of the ladder!
9. Humor. Animals bring humor into our lives, a radical, celebrative awareness of dialectic and paradox. Animals, I am convinced, love to make us human animals laugh. They are often well aware, in my opinion, of what makes us laugh and they are very often as humorous as they are humor-bearers. Animals are truly holy in their way, for all humor is reflection of the divine good humor. A study on wolves, “Of Wolves and Men,” by Barry Lopez, tells the story how the author observed a wolf spend over an hour playing with a piece of dry caribou hide, tossing it in the air as we do Frisbees. He saw wolves chase ducks amidst splashing of wings and water—al in fun. My dog once caught a squirrel—to eat it—but to play with it. Though the squirrel was traumatized by my dog’s invitation, he nevertheless went away completely unharmed. Indeed, it has been my experience that animals have very often retained a richer sense of humor than some persons I have met who have come from an acosmic spiritual direction experience.
10. Silent Dignity. Animals have a sense of their own worth and dignity—a pride at their own unique existence that subtly suggests that no one ever preached to them about original sin. As a result they appear at home with silence, with themselves and with solitude. I have been amazed in recent years to learn how many animals come out to watch the sun set, for example. Ducks, birds, dogs and God knows how many smaller creatures, have a contemplative side to them that the human species of late has all but forgotten.

These ten aspects of sound spiritual directions to be learned from animals are only an introduction to a weighty and much neglected subject. I invite readers to reflect and expand on these basic contributions that animals make to our spiritual lives. What is clear is that God has blessed our animals and blessed us through the animals. And God requests of us that we in turn bless God through blessing the animals. For, “The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.” (Psalm 145)