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At Least My Dog Loves Me

One of our church’s sextons has the unique talent of knowing how and when to say “wah” to me. Putting the experience into print can’t possibly describe the annoying whining sound he makes when he says the word, but I guess I sometimes deserve it given my occasional habit of complaining how really, really bad my life is.

Before I bellyache further, you need to know that my head understands that my life couldn’t be better. I’m married to a wonderful woman. I have kids who love me, grandchildren who think that I’m funny, a business that occasionally pays me money, a congregation that I enjoy being a part of and ministering in, and a dog who thinks that I walk next to Jesus.

Really.

So I really have no reason to complain, except that occasionally—to keep up with my neighbors or to better blend in with my family and friends—I offer a complaint or two to the Mystery that at one time was placated by burnt offerings but in more recent dispensations seems to demand so very much more. So to be utterly frank—and I say this with some trepidation as some folks still cling to the belief that good Christians don’t have these issues—July was a hard month.

I began the month, to my wife’s embarrassment, by adding up the attorneys in my life. I count three, two to handle business situations not entirely of my own making and one to put a close to some personal issues. I figure that’s three attorneys too many and while I’ve got no personal animosity with the Oregon Bar or any other bar for that matter—my brother was trained as an attorney and I actually gave serious thought to entering law school while in divinity school because one without the other didn’t seem rigorous enough—I’m happy to hope that at some point in my life I might not need any. Attorneys that is.

And then the day after the Concourse event here in Forest Grove, I took my 1993 Alfa Romeo Spider out for a drive through Gales Creek toward Browns Camp. And while I wasn’t exactly imitating the more expensive cars I was ogling the day before—Alfas are a giant step up from Fiats (I ought to know as I’ve owned four of them) but are still a long stretch before the more expensive Italian driving machines—I have to admit I was “pushing it” a little. Somewhere around 75 mph, I mean 55 mph, my engine began its own whining, but not in the regular sense of the word. I heard a “bang” where a “whir” was supposed to be—okay, actually a lot of banging—and immediately realized that I had grossly erred by not checking the engine oil.

Pulling over at the Gales Creek Grocery I added four quarts of oil and downed two corn dogs—the engine takes seven quarts of oil though I was at my limit on corn dogs, so I figured it was no big deal—but by the time I got home I realized my car needed a whole new engine. And since they don’t make new engines for Alfas—I have, no correction, I had, one of the last few Alfa Romeo Spiders to be imported—the mechanic offered to resurrect my Italian driving experience with an evangelical rebirth of sort. But told me that tearing off the bottom half of my engine, replacing the crank shaft, and maybe rebuilding the transmission, could all be had for a total that would likely exceed the amount I paid 30 years ago as a down payment on my first home.

I have a little edition of the Gnostic Gospels that I’ve been carrying around the last couple of weeks—if you’ve been following our announcements in church these past few months, you know that I’m teaching a course at FGUCC called “Banned from the Bible”—and I’ve turned in recent days to one of the texts that never really had a chance of being in the Bible but is occasionally so good that I wonder why not. In the Gospel of Truth, reportedly written in the second century AD Christ by a Christian named Valentinus, we read these words: “God is good. He knows his plants, because it is he who planted them in his own garden.” And while they didn’t make it into your scriptures, I’m beginning to believe that these words, and others like them, ought to at least appear in mine.

Truth be told—and I’m taking a big gulp of air here because it isn’t easy to complain this way—I sometimes feel betrayed by the ministrations and machines in my life. But my dog still loves me. And given that “dog” spelled backwards spells “God,” I believe God does too. And I guess that means that in the end—whenever the end comes, and I’m hoping it’s none too soon—everything will turn out fine. “God is good,” Valentinus writes. So I guess that it will all be okay.