Independence

Mommy is watching Kundun, the Martin Scorsese film based on the life of the Dalai Lama. It is about the struggles of the Tibetan people.

Pugs are Tibetan people. It is true! We first appeared in China, but then were taken to Tibet to guard the monasteries. When you go to the the East Asian floor of the art museum you can see statues of dogs with short noses and curly tales from thousands of years ago. In past posts, I have written about how the East Asian pug aesthetic translated itself into the statues of lions. The East Asians had never seen lion but had heard stories about them. So when they made representations of them, they made them look like pugs. So those statues of those flying lions that you find in Tibetan stores are really representations of enlightened pugs. It is true.

I, Poppy, am not watching Kundun. In fact, I am sleeping. In my comfortable, material life in exile I have forgotten my Tibetan brothers and sisters. In my dreams I am chasing squirrels.

Resolutions

Happy 2009 to all my fans! I don't really know when 2009 started, but it must have been recently, because I have lately been subjected to several new regimens in an effort to make me the Best Pug I Can Be.

Note that I have been subjected to such regimens. I, Poppy, am not an introspective or spiritual pug, and do not really care if I am the Best Pug I Can Be. I live, resolutely, in the material world. As long as you give me treats and tummy rubs, I am okay.

Self-improvement is not a part of my philosophy of life. If you don't give me treats and tummy rubs, it is your problem, and I will tell you that. Loudly.

My parents are the introspective and spiritual beings in the house. (Duncan is spiritual, but not introspective). They are about self-improvement and dog improvement. (Read pug-improvement -- Duncan is being made to do nothing). I am really not crazy about human self-improvement, as it causes my parents to be away a lot, thus making my feeding schedule erratic. I am okay with part of the pug-improvement plan, and not okay with the other part.

Two resolutions have been made for me: 1. More walks. 2. No accidents in the house.

I have to have more walks because I am a round pug. My mommy figures that if people at risk of obesity can improve their health by taking more walks, then pugs at risk of obesity will also improve by walking. I don't care why we go. I like to walk. Sniffing is good, too.

The second resolution requires making me change some habits that I acquired when we came to live with the boys. This is not so fun. Where I used to get the run of the house at night, now I have to be crated. I am a good girl and do not complain, but I don't like it. Notice that being the Best Pug I Can Be is not the same as Free to Be You and Me. I am a cunning and sneaky pug, and my parents don't trust me.

Frogs

I, Poppy, have been asked by one of my fans to comment on frogs and stories about frogs.

I have never seen a frog. However, I have been told that I look like a frog. I, Poppy, am not vain. I do not care what I look like. My mommy and my grandma try to dress me up in pretty collars with matching leashes, but I am not particular about what I wear.

I am also not particular about who I kiss. I might like to kiss a frog. But I am thinking that I would rather play with the frog than kiss the frog. A frog might be like a toy. It might smell particularly yummy from having been in the water for so long. I have been told that frogs hop. This might be fun to hunt. The frog would hop, and I might scootch after it. It might hop further, and then I would bark and do the play bow. Once I have caught the frog, I might have to clutch the frog between my teeth and shake it, like I do with my other toys. I might have to locate the squeaker and remove it. The frog might wind up in pieces with its stuffing removed, much like the toys Duncan and I got for Christmas.

Religion and Animals, My Response

I, Poppy, have never been observed praying and do not have a favorite hymn -- not even "All Things Bright and Beautiful." I am a "Saint Francis Day" Christian. I attend church for the blessing of the animals, and then I really don't enjoy being doused with holy water. It reminds me of getting a bath, an activity to which I am opposed. I have also enjoyed a sort of 21st century religious upbringing, the result of which is that I am multi-denominational, and perhaps multi-religious. I have been blessed in both the Lutheran and Episcopal churches. Recently, I have noticed that meditation cushions make a comfortable bed.

I do enjoy the social aspect of church even though there is no casserole in the fellowship hall after the blessing of the animals. There are always plenty of dogs there, barking. There is general consternation. Unfortunately, in a church we are restricted by human forms of worship. There are pews. There is an organ. There is a liturgy. There are no balls. The last time I was blessed, a bulldog was leading the recessional. I was sitting next to the aisle and I desperately wanted to say hello to the bulldog. So I jumped down from the pew and the bulldog and I introduced ourselves. Did we care that we stopped the entire choir from moving? Did we care that the organ was still playing and the congregation was still singing and that we were prohibiting the service from continuing as it was planned? No! There was a dog. He needed to be sniffed.

This idea of animals and religion has me puzzled, for I am God's least introspective creature, and the idea of any sort of spirituality seems to require introspection. Ear rubs, cuddling, Greenies, pleasures of all sorts -- these transport me.*

You humans say that we are all part of a fallen creation. To that, I say, snort. The fallen creation stuff is your baggage. For this, I posit Duncan, playing basketball this morning. The humans were all trying to make baskets. No one noticed Duncan watching. The humans were all trying to make a goal, but as soon as they tried, and the ball bounced off of the garage wall or the rim of the hoop, and Duncan was there to catch it. It bounced off the tip of his nose. It rolled into the rough. He pushed it through the rough and out onto the court. I brought it to a human. He sat. "Do it again," he said. Duncan the Rebounder. We all watched him with that ball. The ball would miss its original target, and he found the best joy in recovering it. He was single-minded. There was nothing in the world except that ball and ways that that ball could be kept in motion.

*If I may use an example from Shakespeare (I prefer not to use Shakespeare unless he really proves my point, for I have not forgiven him for the negative dog imagery in King Lear), I will refer you to Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I feel close to Bottom, his introspection is limited, as well. The closer Bottom gets to Titania, the queen of the fairies, the more he itches. In the middle of his epiphany, he is completely and totally aware of his body.

Religion and Animals

My Grandpa forwarded me the essay that appears below. I am intrigued, as when I read this article, my head cocked to the side.

Sightings 5/29/08

Religion and Other Animals

-- Paul Waldau

A March 2008 news item from the BBC, "'Praying' dog at Japanese temple," opened with the lines, "Attendance at a Buddhist temple in Japan has increased since the temple's pet, a two-year-old dog, has joined in the daily prayers. Conan, a Chihuahua, sits on his hind legs, raises his paws and puts them together at the tip of his nose." That the dog's actions might not have involved praying of the human kind, as it were, is signaled by the quotation marks around "praying," and by quotes from various people that suggest alternative explanations for the dog's behavior. Yet the story closed on a note that underscores humans' continuing deep fascination with the idea of animals as potentially religious: "Jigenin temple now gets 30 percent more visitors than it did before Conan joined in the prayers."

Especially interested in the events at Jigenin are scholars in the developing field of "religion and animals." This field is burgeoning today because it touches on many issues of relevance to our twenty-first-century lives, as religion continues to strongly influence how we regard the inevitable connection between our lives and the lives of those diverse beings we call animals. Values and views about animals that originated in religious traditions, often now enshrined in societies as cultural backdrop, continue to exert great influence on this fundamental intersection in our lives.

There are ancient precedents for the claim that nonhuman animals have a religious sensibility. Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) claimed that elephants, the animal "closest to man," not only recognized the language of their homeland, obeyed orders, and remembered what they learned, but also had been seen "worshipping the sun and stars, and purifying [themselves] at the new moon, bathing in the river, and invoking the heavens."

Today, scholars such as Harvard's Kimberley C. Patton provide theologically informed readings of many traditional claims about the religious awareness of other beings. Patton deals, for example, with "ways in which animals are believed to possess a unique awareness of holiness," noting that "in many religious worlds…mutual intelligibility obtains between God and animals that exists outside of human perceptual ranges." Assertions of a special relationship between animals and God are routinely dismissed in our human-centered world. But the increased attendance at Jigenen temple reflects that we are fascinated by our fellow creatures and the idea of their potential spirituality. In fact, "religion and animals" themes appear in a surprising number of places—one example is Peter Miller's article "Jane Goodall" in the December 1995 National Geographic, in which he discusses Goodall's belief that expressions of awe by chimpanzees at a waterfall site "may resemble the emotions that led early humans to religion."

The debate over whether or not our animal neighbors can be "religious" is but one issue in the growing field of religion and animals. In the last decade, the field has also illuminated the significant roles played by religious traditions in our learning about and treatment of other living beings. The contemporary relevance of these topics is reflected in the growth of the field—at the American Academy of Religion, a professional association of teachers and scholars of religion, the formal group known as the "Animals and Religion Consultation" has received growing attention, and publications dealing with religion and animals are increasing exponentially.

This scholarly work emerges into a context where humans' attitudes toward our cousin animals are more multifaceted than ever. At times, some humans seem driven by a refusal to inquire about the nonhuman lives within and near their communities. This refusal is evident in food practices, where many encounter animals most frequently. At the same time, more households in the United States today have companion animals than have children. Polls consistently indicate that an astonishing number of people—in some cases more than ninety-nine percent—hold their dog or cat to be a "family member."

Communities of faith are among the institutions that are most responsive to the complex connections between humans and other animals. One increasingly finds that contemporary religious communities have reinstituted the ancient practice known often as "blessing of the animals." Some communities of faith are quite creative in recognizing the pastoral value of concerns for their members' interactions with nonhumans—some offer worship services in which believers can bring their nonhuman companions, and others provide grief counseling when a nonhuman family member dies.

Theologian Thomas Berry suggests, "We cannot be truly ourselves in any adequate manner without all our companion beings throughout the earth. The larger community constitutes our greater self." Growing awareness of "religion and animals," both scholarly and practical, opens the door to a fundamental question faced by people of divergent faiths—who will humans acknowledge as constitutive of their greater selves?

Paul Waldau is the director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy and a professor in the Department of Environment and Population Health at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. With Kimberley Patton, he edited A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2006).

References:

Peter Miller, "Jane Goodall." National Geographic 188, no. 6 (1995).

Kimberly Patton, "'He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs': Recovering Animal Theology in the Abrahamic Traditions." The Harvard Theological Review 93, no.1 (2000): 401-34.

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.