Closing a Gap in the Universe

"Man with dog," writes C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves, "closes a gap in the universe." Or perhaps just in one's own pursuit of a relationship with the Creator of the universe.

Datum: Ever since I watched Franco Zefferelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" in a seminary philosophy course I have been taken with St. Francis of Assissi. Of course, as a happily married Baptist, it was never likely that the Lord would call me to life in the Friars Minor. Still, through that initial connection I have grown to admire much about the monastic orders as I studied their origins among the desert fathers of the fourth century. I feel a consistent yearning to incorporate more of that contemplative spirituality into my own very active spiritual tradition.

Datum: About twelve years ago my son received a puppy for his eighth birthday. I was not happy about it. I did not feel that our family was ready to take on a dog. But my child's delight and my wife's wiser counsel prevailed. They went to Peewee's Pet Adoption World way out on Saratoga here in Corpus Christi (http://peeweespets.com/) and came home with Joey, a shepherd/lab/husky mix. A little less than two years ago, Joey did - rather suddenly - of a tumor. The terms of my on-campus apartment, while generous in many ways, do not permit me to replace him. (The board had very kindly agreed to grandfather Joey when we moved in.) This left me to discover how powerfully, in the decade-long interval between the dog's arrival and his death, I had grown to appreciate and benefit from his presence.

While pondering these two data recently I hit on a possible solution: why not volunteer at a local animal shelter? Accordingly I emailed the Gulf Coast Humane Society (http://www.gchscc.org/) where Cody Rice, the Director of Volunteers/Education, received me with kindness and enthusiasm. After a two-hour training and orientation, I was ready to roll. So for about a month now, I have spent an hour, two days a week, strolling around the GCHS grounds with various canines.

So where does St. Francis come in?

Well, after all, he did convert the Wolf of Gubbio, which had fallen into the regrettable habit of eating the locals. And, as everyone knows, the domestic dog - canis familiaris - is nothing but the wild wolf - canis lupus- converted. While protestants - to say nothing of skeptics - scoff at the story, and while I don't insist on its historicity, it has a certain New Testament flavor to it. After all, as C. S. Lewis has pointed out, miracles "do close and small and, as it were, in focus what God at other times does so large that men do not attend to it." So the God who is always turning water to wine through the normal (and, when you think about it, amazing) process of rain and sun resulting in bursting purple grapes, simply does the same thing on an expedited schedule at the wedding feast in Cana. The God who constantly takes a few kernels of wheat and transforms them into a field of grain fit to feed a multitude, makes an entire crop in the course of one prayer at the feeding of the five thousand.

In the same way, the story of St. Francis and the wolf shows us God domesticating in a moment an animal that he designed all along with the genetic capacity for infinite malleability for human purposes. A common human being housebreaking an average mutt is engaged in the same sort of miracle (if not on the same scale) as the Little Holy Man curing a ravening wolf of a taste for raw peasant. As the old cook says in his sermon to the sharks on Moby Dick, "You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned." And if we govern the wolf in the dog, he can truly be an angel unaware, for all angel (if we take the story of Lucifer's fall seriously) is nothing more than the shark well governed.

At any rate, Francis has become the patron saint of animals and ecology and so it seems to me that in spending a couple of afternoons now and again consorting with a few of Gubbio's shirttail relatives - some of whom still, I admit it, need a measure of converting - I am both feeding my pet-jones and, if this isn't going too far, growing closer to Christ.