Put Down the Binders and Spend Some Time with Seamus

We all live inside bubbles. Cultural constructs that we have created in which to exist. Each bubble has its own norms and its own vocabulary. Each bubble has a hierarchy of who and what's important. After a while, we become so used to our bubble that we start to believe that our bubble is all there is; our bubble is the entire universe. The sad commentary is that the bubble dweller no longer lives in direct contact with ultimate reality. We have constructed all kinds of bubbles to live in. Political bubbles, religious bubbles, racial bubbles, social bubbles, and cultural bubbles to name a few.

Meister Eckhart, the Dominican priest in the Middle Ages, was very concerned that the church was getting lost and locked inside its own construct. He preached trying his best to call the church out of its bubble. Of course, this rubbed the powers that be the wrong way. It's dangerous to mess around with the vested interest of a bubble; so Eckhart was condemned three times by the Pope. I love Eckhart's response to the church authorities. It's as if he felt sorry for them and felt that they were lost. He said, "It would do them good to spend sometime with a dog, for the life in the dog would bring them courage". I think what Eckhart was implying was that the church no longer lived connected to the real universe and that a dog might help them reconnect to the real.

Thomas Aquinas, another Dominican priest in the Middle Ages, spent his life writing to free the church from its Platonic, Augustinian, and fundamentalist bubble. He worked hard to expand the church's construct; trying to break it free from its Platonic philosophy by expanding to a Aristotelian philosophy. We should not be surprised that this got him in a lot of trouble only to be canonized later. His response to his critics was wonderful, Aquinas said, "It would serve you well to put down your big black books and perhaps spend sometime with a dog".

I was honored to spend some time with a Native American Shaman several years ago. He shared a story with me that I thought was fascinating. He said, "The four leggeds, the dogs, are worried about us two leggeds. Every time you see a group of dogs together they are having meetings to try and figure out how to help us. They think we have lost our way. That we are too busy, stressed, and out of touch with what is real. The dogs have come up with a plan to try to help us. First, they are going to connect with us at an even deeper level. And second, visit us more in our dreams". The Shaman ended his story by looking me in the eyes and saying, "we can have hope, the dogs are on our side".

The hope is that we can be free of the confinement of an artificial bubble and touch something utterly real instead. I leave you with a poem while I go spend a little time with my dog Bishop Judd before I have to go to work.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition . . .
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself