I had a blast working on MAJESTIE. I told myself (and others) that I’ve never had as much fun on a project in my life. Then I remembered I said the same thing about TALE. Oops. The truth is, I enjoyed both of them and hated to stop and move on to something else. I am not sure you can do a book and ask things of yourself and your family without being totally in love with it. I can only hope it reflects in the reading.

In preparation for its release, I reread TALE just last week. I laughed. I cried. I remembered. All of it was immediate, fresh. The spirit of my three dogs, my dalmatians—Oreo, Salem, and Savannah—is captured in this book, as are all the memories of those days. It has been a while since I have read it through and I had the sense I was reading someone else’s book. I love that. It had the effect on me that I hope it may have on you when you read (notice I didn’t say if you read it). To be swept up by an irresistible spirit.

Google Books has a teaser that will give you some idea of what you’re in for. You can also download a pdf file of Chapter One from this blog if you need any convincing.

When I first wrote this post, I included the last few paragraphs of the book. I rethought the strategy. I won’t spoil the ending for you. As a consolation, here is a random excerpt from the book:

It is comforting to think of God as an author, a finisher, a perfecter. It comforts me even more to know he literally puts himself into his work, and that he does it so thoroughly. The signature he leaves is a living signature, the autograph of God, peculiar to him alone. It cannot be forged or imitated.

The finest painting of a sunset will never be more than a painting of a sunset. It will never change. It will have many admirers, but it will never live. The best it can do is mimic divine authorship. DaVinci’s Mona Lisa is a wonder, yes, but it is still a two-dimensional wonder, a wonder of old paint and genius.

The sunset I watched yesterday was much more than that. It was a living thing. It was fluid. It was lyrical. There was poetry and understatement in its movement. A single beam of dying light, a downy bloat of clouds, a sky that seemed to bleed. Moment to moment, from glory to glory, never dull, a playing out of some script, and right before my eyes. Asking things of my senses that a painting cannot ask. Moving me in ways unknown to art.

Now that is authorship.

And though I am more important to him than any spectacle of nature, he leaves nothing out. His signature is all around us. It is fluid. It is lyrical. The detail is immaculate, as he is immaculate.

Oh, yeah, it’s also about dogs.

THIS HOMAGE WE PAY to the dog is nothing new. She has maintained a presence in literature consistently since man was first able to record his thoughts. I suspect that an image of the dog, or something like the dog, was painted on cave walls. It seems we can’t get enough of them, these creatures that are so purely themselves, that love with such genuine effervescence. The following passage was written, not about a man or a woman in love, nor was it written about the mechanism of worship in the human heart, in spite of how precise an image it makes. It was written about a dog.

It [love] manifested itself to him as a void in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamored to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.  

—Jack London, White Fang

As you can see, this is not just another portrait of warmth and loyalty. The devoted life will ask much more than that. The springs of life are deep, and for too many of us, untouched. Life by toleration, and not by enjoyment. Unaware that there is anything more, we too often limit ourselves to the shallows, and deny what is so very close to us, that which is perhaps one surrender, one small death beyond our reach.

Genuine love is severe. It is costly, the way as treacherous as it is narrow and steep. But we are not left to our own devices. Not trusting us to figure love out for ourselves, Christ showed us how it was to be done. Having botched it so completely as we are given to do, he showed us what love looks like, how it behaves, the submission it demands, the surrender it cannot do without. He came that we might see the divine within each of us; that we might know what authenticity means. At the cost of his own life, he bought back heaven for us, and with it bought back our truest humanity. There is no better image of love. Outside of that, nature has given us the dog.  

Adaptation from Chapter One — SO INEVITABLY DOG

Note: We received the following story from one of our readers [the picture above was included with it]. It was too good to pass up. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. —David

ONE DAY A DOG WANDERED INTO MY YARD. I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of. He calmly walked over to me, like we were old friends. I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out. The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks. Curious, I pinned a note to his collar:

“I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.”

The next day he arrived for his nap, but with a different note pinned to his collar:

“He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3. He’s trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?”

THEY HAVE NO PLANS TO WORRY THEM. Everything is NOW. If you don’t believe that, watch them eat. Immediacy is all. Dogs have an indifference to wealth that is difficult to understand, as well as an indifference to trends and fashions of the hour, even spiritual ones. Celebrity means nothing to them. They are unmoved by the media. They just seem to live life authentically, in every moment, which is in itself a form of worship, that is, living according to some original design, and to the delight of the Creator of that design. A dog knows no other option, having no thought of, nor any real concept of tomorrow, taking life in with the wolfish gulp.

Outside of an occasional howl, whine, or whimper, a bark, growl, or pant, my dogs had no audible language and therefore had to show me their devotion outside of words, by the simple art of being themselves. They had to give devotion a shape that was louder, deeper, and truer than tongues.

Love was animated. It was conspicuous, playful, kind, without pretense. They could not hide what they felt. They saw little point in it. They were neither political, nor guarded. They could not wrap themselves in protective coverings. They had not learned from us the art of disguising or suppressing what they felt. They were who they were. They accepted the mystery of me, the other I seemed to be to them. They didn’t know how to question it, so they didn’t bother.

Devotion was, for them, a way of life. They made it look easy. I envied them, and yet the mirror they held up seemed to suggest possibilities, bright and hopeful possibilities that something similar might be discovered about my own nature, that I too might live authentically, that is, I might live life as it was designed to be lived, at capacity, at full measures, and with fewer restraints. All this, and with love at the very heart of it, love that is no less than the undersong of life, as natural as breathing.

The above is an excerpt from a chapter entitled SO INEVITABLY DOG.

DOGS ARE ABLE TO FORGIVE with an ease you and I seem incapable of. There may be many reasons for this, but I want to suggest that time, or rather the dog’s indifference to time, has something to do with it. Time is linear. It moves in a straight line. Past, present, and future can be plotted in a concrete and measurable order. This doesn’t mean a whole lot to the dog. Their indifference to time is pretty much absolute. Everything is immediate, flush, present, and perhaps above all, relevant. Past, present, and future are intangibles, so the dog has little use for them. The dog, therefore, doesn’t have a past, at least not like you and I have a past. And if I have no past, where am I to list all the offenses against me? Where is the record to be kept? To remember an offense, you must have a past to keep them in.

This makes it easier for me to understand how God can forgive my crimes against him. In his love, he has chosen to forget them. He made a law that he himself cannot break. He set legislation against his own omniscience. He’s allowed himself to forget. Imagine that! My offence becomes lost in his forgetfulness. Only time—linear, sequential time, record keeping time—allows any of us to look back, to look forward, to forget, to remember, to keep records. Eternity frustrates this order of things and renders time a nonissue.

The dog doesn’t have to work so hard to understand this.  

You and I have a more complicated relationship with time than the dog does. Yesterday has no power over the dog. They do not burden themselves with souvenirs, emotional or otherwise. Time isn’t insufferably linked to her psychology as it is to ours. 

Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. The dog’s ability to forgive may be due simply to her outrageous capacity to love, which is always beyond explanation. Perhaps love has such sovereignty over the dog that it suffers no obstacle. And unforgiveness is an obstacle. As the godfather might have said, “Unforgiveness is a stone in the shoe of love.”

Love keeps no record of wrongs. It can keep no such memories, for there is no time to put them in. Proving the point: To err is human. To forgive is, well, canine.

The above excerpt is an adaption from a chapter entitled If I Love You, Who Cares What Time It Is? 

OKAY, SO YOU’VE DECIDED TO TAKE ROVER ON A NICE WALK. A little exercise. A little sunshine. It doesn’t get any better than this. The rhythm between you and the dog is a happy one. The leash, like life itself, is firm in your grip. And then, WHAM!, against all hope, that calm quiet walk is overturned by a sudden burst of lunge and desire. “Oh! Oh! Oh! What is that? That is rich! rich! Just look! That heap of bliss lying there, so fragrant, so delicate, so, so unattended! And this flower, this weed, this drooping thing! You don’t know what you’re missing! Smell, smell, smell! Put your nose into it! O, happiness! Isn’t life great?!?”  Of course, that is the book version. Truth is, the dog doesn’t bother with punctuation, or even something as conventional as space between words. It is more like,

ohohohwhatisthatthatisrichrichjustlookthatheapofblisslyingtheresofragrantsodelicate

sosounattendedandthisflowerthisweedthisdroopingthingyoudontknowwhatyouremissing

smellsmellsmellputyournoseintoitohappinessisntlifegreat

Unnerved, we do our best to rise to the challenge, regain control, put the day back in order, and here is this dog, dragging us over to this dead heap of vegetation by the side of the road, to this lump with no name, taking deep drafts of it as if the secret of life was contained in that one desperate intake of smelly air. Realizing that their desire to indulge the moment is stronger than our ability to recapture the command we only thought we had, we simply stop, and with a sigh of resignation, let them have their way. We stand idly by, impatient, anxious to move on, not quite as fascinated as they are.

And we miss the whole point.

For the dog, the nose is the chief negotiator of life. And what looks like a waste of time to you and me, is treasure and spoil to them. All time and eternity mingles together for the dog in that one feast of smell. Paradise is accessible to them. They can indulge their deepest senses, and with no restraints. Our dogs could pursue bliss with as much thought as we might give a sip of tea in the afternoon. Time had no claim on them whatsoever.   

If it is true that dogs have mastery over time (and only because it is a trifle to them, something that is of little interest to them), then it is just as true that time has mastery over the rest of us. We draft words like tyranny to describe our relationship to time, and deadline. But deadlines are real. The eight hours allotted to me are not the ten I need. So what does the dog have to teach us? Simple. That the feast is closer than we might think. That the moment is all we have, and perhaps that is where the X on the map is to be found. That the immediate is where life happens. That paradise is as available as we truly desire it to be. It is perhaps one sudden lunge away. Maybe we just haven’t got the scent quite yet. 

—The subtitle of my book is FINALLY, IT WAS MY DOGS WHO TAUGHT ME TO STOP AND SMELL, WELL, EVERYTHING!    The above text is adapted from a chapter of the same title.  © 2008 David Teems. All rights reserved.

DEVOTION IS NOT A GAME TO THE DOG. She takes it seriously. She is vigilant. She seems to know how it works, and why it is important. Devotion is visceral. It defines her. It makes the awe of nature visible, almost audible, telling quite profoundly of a Creator that somehow stashes bits of himself in all he creates; remembering that the Creator is a God who defines himself by one thing, and that is love. Every action he takes has one life behind it. It is the single motive in his heart.

The dog also sets no limits on who is worthy of her love. Forgive my presumption, but the dog exercises a radical Christianity that observes no preference whatsoever. Her love is not colored with bias or preferment. Her love has no politics. It knows neither rank nor station. When Jesus refers to “the least of these my brethren . . ., “ she understands him perfectly. She can love at either end of the social horizon, and with just as much veracity and fearlessness, just as much joy and bubble. Beggar, prince, new money, old money, no money, it matters as little to the dog as it does to God. One poet writes:

“I sing the mangy dog, the pitiful, the homeless dog, the roving dog, the circus dog. . . . I sing the luckless dog who wanders alone through the winding ravines of huge cities, or the one who blinks up at some poor outcast of society with its soulful eyes, as much as to say, “take me with you, and out of our joint misery we will make a kind of happiness.” —Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

According to authentic faith, am I to give as much as my very life for a stranger? The hard answer is yes. Am I to love to the extent of my own ruin, if so asked? The same hard answer. Unreasonable, illogical, love this extreme is possible only to one who is lost so completely in God as to have no identity outside him. Truth is, one loses nothing, because God cannot be lost. Outside him, there is not strength enough, nor divinity enough, nor desire enough to love.

This sacrifice of self is the highest form worship can take. In the devoted life, my martyrdom is a daily event.

Is my soul yet purged of waste and distraction? Is it yet free of smallness and complaint? Can I love a beggar or a prince with the same full heart? Is my love so like God’s as to be sacrificial? Would I give my heart away simply because he asks me to? Can I cast it off as if it were a trifle? Or is my Christianity a mere painting of love, an image to reverence and pay small homage to, something outside the flow of life, outside relevance itself? Do I reserve my worship for a given time and place? Is it bound to a certain style or protocol? Or is my worship migratory? Does it wake with me in the morning, smile upon me throughout the courses of my day, give me words when I need them, courage in a time of indecision? Does worship gather me up at night, is it still warm on my lips when sleep comes over me at last? Am I lost in you, Lord, or am I just lost?

These questions suggest a love that is severe. But I argue, as others have, is there any other kind?

And this brings us back to the dog. Joyful, joyful, joyful! In all creation below man there is no more intense lover than the dog, and there is perhaps no creature happier. She is sold out. Devotion is life to her. She has rediscovered her paradise. Of course, the dog was never expelled from paradise in the first place, which may count for something. She knows her redeemer. She studies him. She aches in the absence of him. Sometimes she aches in his presence. Without worship, even the dog knows life is missing something necessary, something written on nature itself.

—The above is an excerpt from a chapter entitled It’s Almost Like Being in Love