Jeb the Dog occupies center stage in our lives. We have become the dog owners we vowed never to become. Jeb knows he’s loved and reciprocates in kind. Not only is Jeb a terrific companion. Those who have pets, especially dogs, will understand that he is also a great teacher of what’s important in life.

One consequence of being so loved is that Jeb is a very happy, content animal. If you look in the dictionary for “a dog’s life” you will find Jeb’s photo next to the definition. Jeb doesn’t bark. Yes, he can and it’s quite robust. He just doesn’t. In fact, we do not recall hearing him bark any time during 2015.

Among the many virtues Jeb models exceedingly well are patience, forgiveness and gratitude. This morning his barking habits, or lack thereof, converged with something I was reading to shed new insight and some much-needed wisdom…

“Dogs bark at everyone they do not know,” says Herakleitos [Greece, 530-470 B.C.] — a ritual played out with liturgical precision over the airwaves every morning, filing not only radios, but hearts and minds, “with static.”

We desperately need more wisdom today! Thomas Merton wrote in 1968:

Instead of taking care to examine the realities of our political or social problems, we simply bring out the idols in solomon procession. “We are the ones who are right, they are the ones who are wrong. We are the good guys, they are the bad guys.”

Senseless, obnoxious and continuous barking supplies a perfect metaphor for our toxic Presidential campaign, unconscionable shutdown of naming a Supreme Court justice, and the intractable horror of all that ISIS symbolizes. We are in a perilous position and our “best” seems to be incessant barking like a pack of junk yard dogs. We are living with a cacophony of paralyzing static!

Christopher Pramuk perfectly frames our predicament: “Why the rhetoric, machinery, and obscene liturgy of war — with its collateral damage of rape, torture, imprisonment without trial, destruction of cultures, infrastructures, and hopes for future generations–ad nauseum? Pramuk cites Merton’s prescription:

[Because] we do not have mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance, or non-reprisal. …We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all the people, and who says nothing.

Jeb the Dog embodies patience, forgiveness and gratitude. He reads his situation really well. Yes, Jeb can bark. He just chooses not to. Rather, he chooses to meet everyone who comes his way as a friend with the expectation they will have a treat to give him.

There is great wisdom to be learned from Jeb the Dog. He really knows how to live!
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Merton and Pramuk quotes are taken from Sophia, The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Thomas Pramuk, A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press, Collegeville MN (2009) p 200. Original source for first Merton quote is Faith and Violence, p 154. The second Merton quote: Emblems of a Season of Fury (1963), p 63.