Is There a Dog?

"got a stack of books so I could learn how to live
many are left half-read, covered by the cobwebs on my shelf" -Ginny Owens, Own Me

I should be in bed, but some weird food poisoning drove Sharon and I to bed shortly after Asher went to sleep, and for me that always means waking up at midnight and having trouble getting back to sleep for a little while, so I thought I'd share.

I assume you've heard the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac? Well, one book that keeps cropping up in my spiritual life is Mary Ellen Ashcroft's Dogspell. Sharon and I went to a GCF conference where she spoke, and I've got to admit, neither of us really enjoyed it. We're both (to use Rice speak) more SE than academ, and I think by the end of the week, the word narrative had taken on a special capacity to send us screaming.

But (I think I remember this correctly, if not it's still a good story) while there you must visit the book table (that's half of going to an IV retreat!) and we spotted this little book. As you can see from the Amazon link above, the thing is under 100 pages. And we were intrigued, so we bought it thinking, "it's short; even if it's awful it won't take long."

Now, for the worrisome, yes, on first read some of the word pictures and analogies will bug you. You'll get frustrated by what seems to be her clumsiness with switching around the word dog and God in sentences; it'll seem almost sacrilegious. Dr. Ashcroft reminds us in the introduction that we would do well to remember Dorothy Sayers's (one of Sharon's and my favorite authors) admonition:

When we use these expressions, we know perfectly well that they are metaphors and analogies; what is more, we know perfectly well where the metaphor begins and ends. We do not suppose for one moment that God procreates children in the same manner as a human father and we are quite well aware that preachers who use the "father" metaphor intend and expect no such perverse interpretation of their language. Nor (unless we are very stupid indeed) do we go on to deduce from the analogy that we are to imagine God as being a cruel, careless or injudicious father such as we may see from time to time in daily life; still less, that all the activities of a human father may be attributed to God, such as earning money for the support of the family, or demanding the first use of the bathroom in the morning.

Once you get over the uncomfortable notion of God as dog, then some pretty amazing truths come wagging happily out of the metaphor.

What really gets me is that, whenever I see the book laying around, I pick it up and read it again. Part of that is because it's so short (it's 86 pages so it never feels like it'll be a burden to read part of again) and part is because it seems so inoffensive (God as dog... I'll be able to read a few pages of this while I'm trying to go to sleep because it's not gonna have anything too powerful to say to me) and within a few pages, I am on the verge of tears if not actually weeping. It's images are powerful; it's critique (especially of the kind of Christianity I tend to practice) is damning. I don't expect God to love me even as much as a good dog, and I especially struggle with the antiseptic space I put in my spiritual w-a-l-k compared to the physical reality (that I do secretly crave) of the welcome of the Incarnation.

(Asher, bless his heart, drives this point home relentlessly. We pray at night and he pipes up, "Where is God?" We begin to try to explain omnipresence to him and he gets right to the point: "but I want to SEE him." Not because he wants proof; he's too young to have that kind of rational extrapolation. No, it's because he longs for the other side of love he's seen: the hugs, the kisses, the tickling, the sharing.)

It's these questions (and this book) that help me understand the meat (no pun intended) behind Catholic doctrines like transubstantiation. Why do we care so much (as evangelicals) to carefully point out that Jesus is not physically present in the bread and wine (yes, I meant juice)? I find as I age that I care less and less whether or not my Lord is present in those things as I am in whether or not I (in body as opposed to carefully distanced mental ascent) am present to receive Him if he is. If I don't expect Him to show up, why should I?

But what really starts to get me about this book right now (back to Mary Ellen Ashcroft for a minute) is how Dr. Ashcroft can write a whole little literary tel. (It's obviously a talent reserved for only the highest level of Academ - with a capital A.) Every time I re-read the book I'm not just restruck by the same ideas, but I find a subtle reference to somewhere else that has expounded on those ideas to somewhere else in literature. I get the impression that she had the most fun writing this book by reveling in the fact that she didn't need to index and cross reference every allusion she made, and that by forcing herself to remain under 100 pages, things just get thrown at you: little throw away sentences contain glimpses into whole other giant works. It's fun, and again, makes the book that much more re-readable.

So I've probably read this little book 10 or 15 times now, whereas much more important (and probably better in many ways) Christian tomes (like J.I. Packer's Knowing God) sit by still unread by me.

And now, back to bed. I'll probably think this was some strange dream in the morning.