Do All Good Dogs - and Cats - Go to Heaven?

We seem to be in one of those periods where there is much popular speculation, at least, on the question of animals and the afterlife - or, to rephrase somewhat the title of an animated feature film from some years ago, whether "All Good Dogs" (and Cats, etc., etc.) do indeed "Go to Heaven."


As a person with pets myself, or (as the feline members of the household would put it, "who has the incomparable privilege of being owned by cats and allowed to live in their house, feed them their food, and scoop out that nasty mess from their litter box"), I understand the question very well. 


It is sad to think that those dear little faces whose mere presence in our lives is such a source of comfort to us in our darker hours, whose antics bring us such amusement, whose efforts to cope with a world they understand even less than we do can often inspire us to keep going, will one day pass out of Life - out of our lives - as if they had never existed, leaving a pet-shaped void in our lives with a size that is far out of proportion to either the amount of time they were with us, or the amount of attention we were usually able to give them. 


This is, perhaps, why the idea of the Rainbow Bridge has arisen in recent years. According to a widely-cherished "prose poem" (for lack of a better term), at least those animals which were loved by humans go, upon death, to the Rainbow Bridge, described as being "just this side of Heaven." There they await - in a sort of animal version of the Elysian Fields - the arrival of the human(s) who loved them, at which point the human(s) and the animal(s) "cross the Bridge together." A comforting notion, certainly.


For what it's worth, this is my take on the subject. There are two ways of looking at what has been termed the Christ event in Christian theology: Christ as the One who redeems human sin, or Christ as the One who restores all of the creation to a right relationship with God and with each other. Both views go back to the Bible; Christ as the Restorer of the Cosmos can be found in Romans 8:18-22; Ephesians 1:9-10; and, most famously, in Isaiah 11, where the Branch from the root of Jesse brings a peaceable kingdom where

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard lie down with the kid,

the calf, the young lion, and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall feed;

their young shall lie down together,

and the lion eat straw like the ox.

They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD,

as the waters cover the sea.

Put it this way: if all Christ came to do was to heal the ills attendant on human sin, then, very likely, no dogs or cats go to Heaven. Not being creatures of human sin, they do not share in the redemption of humans from it. But if, on the other hand, Jesus our Brother, kind and good, came to restore the balance of the whole of God's beautiful creation, then the animals we have loved, and that have loved us in return, will, of course, be there in Heaven with us. That, quite simply, is what I believe. I realize that not all theologies agree with mine, and I'm fine with that. We Quakers have a history of pushing the theological envelope, going all the way back to George Fox in mid-seventeenth-century England, who once got into an argument with another guy who said that women have no souls, or, rather, "no more than a goose." To which I would reply, "True - but there is a type of soul proper to geese, and another to women and men; and it seems to be the nature of the Spirit of God not to rest till all of creation comes home to Him."

A Couple of Our Local Shibboleths

A shibboleth is a marker, originally and still often linguistic in nature, used by members of one group as an identity badge.

The term is actually a loan word from the Hebrew, where it names the grain-bearing part of cereal plants, and it entered the English language by way of an incident in the Book of Judges in the Bible.


An Israelite civil war broke out between the tribe of Ephraim, which had settled in what is now called the West Bank, and the men of Gilead, who lived across the river in what is now Jordan. During the conflict, the warriors of Gilead seized control of the only fords across the Jordan River, and they stopped anyone attempting to cross. The Gileadites would then make the traveler (who was under suspicion of being an enemy fighter) try to pronounce the word "shibboleth." If he said the word correctly, the traveler was allowed to pass; but if he said "sibboleth" instead, the Gileadites knew he was an Ephraimite trying to sneak across, so they killed him on the spot.


Fortunately, today's shibboleths aren't so uniformly fatal, although they can still be socially debilitating. Or, at the very least, they will tell your listeners loud and clear that "You aren't from around here." We have a number of such words in this part of North Carolina. Take pecan, for instance. Is it pronounced "pea-CAN," "pick-CONN," or"PEA-conn?" (I say it the last way, but that may be because I had a grandmother who was originally from rural Union County, N.C., near Charlotte, on the S.C. state line.)

Other local shibboleths are geographical in origin. What do you do with the "o" in "Reynolda" and "Colfax?" Traditional local practice has tended to favor "Rinn-OLD-uh" for the first, and to pronounce the first syllable of "Colfax" with the same vowel as at the start of "collar" or "collard greens" - ad campaigns by certain local furniture companies notwithstanding. 

So, if you find yourself reversing those two vowel sounds, don't be surprised if someone asks, "You're not from around here, are you?"

An Odd Musical Note

A few months ago, I stumbled upon a rebroadcast of the old PBS documentary series, The German Americans: 300 Years in the New Land, first aired in 1983. 

I was listening to the last episode of the series, which included an interview featuring one of President Eisenhower's granddaughters. She was describing a panoramic photo, of the D-Day landings in 1944, which had hung on the wall behind Eisenhower's desk after he had left the White House. 

As I listened to the interview, I began to notice the musical underscoring, which sounded familiar but which I couldn't quite place. Suddenly, I burst out laughing: the tune was nothing other than the Welsh national anthem, "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau."

Thinking about it now, I can almost recreate the chain of "thought" leading to this odd occurrence. The usual title of the standard English translation of the Welsh national anthem bears the title "Land of My Fathers." Can't you hear it, too? "'Land of My Fathers' equals 'Fatherland' equals German, right?" And if any little fact checker pointed out the gaff: "Well, nobody but you would know the difference."

And thus do silly and preventable errors come into this world of ours.

Funniest Sweatshirt I Ever Saw

Some years back, I was at a birthday party for the friend of some friends of mine, in the cold part of the year.  The birthday boy, who was barely an acquaintance of mine, was a deputy under Davidson County (N.C.) sheriff Gerald Hege at the time. In other words, not exactly a wandering son of the Ivy League, if you get my drift.


Imagine my surprise, then, when I got a gander at one of the birthday presents, a sweatshirt which bore the legend:

"SI HOC LEGERE SCIS, NIMIUM ERUDITIONIS HABES."


I took one look at it and burst out laughing on the spot. What the sweatshirt said -- in Latin, no less -- was,


 "If you can read this, you're over-educated."


And, to this day, I don't know which was funnier: that the recipient couldn't read the thing, or that I could.

Interesting facts: Catherine Howard

Did you know that Catherine Howard, the fifth of Henry VIII's Six Wives, was beheaded on 13 February 1542,  at the Tower of London?

Catherine (who may never have lived to see her twentieth birthday) married Henry when she was in her mid-to-late teens and he was just past 49. When the news broke that not only was Catherine not a virgin on their wedding night, she may well have taken up again with one of her old boyfriends after saying the vows, Henry had her confined, eventually, to the Tower of London. In a curious and rather bizarre twist to the story, shortly before her execution, Catherine asked for - and received - an executioner's block in her cell, so that she could practice laying her head gracefully upon it and not make a spectacle of herself.

Interesting facts: Washington's birthday

Did you know that the day George Washington was born was originally and officially 11 February 1731 (sometimes written as 1731/2 for dates between 1 January and 24 March) in his native Virginia? Washington was born 20 years before the British Empire (including its colonies on the North American mainland which would soon break away and form the U.S.) switched from the old Julian calendar to the newer, reformed, Gregorian calendar in 1752. 

According to one source, 
(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/01/whats_benjamin_franklins_birthday.html)
most people were content to go on celebrating their birthdays, etc., on the same days they had always observed -- which sounds a bit like  the way the old broadcast TV stations have continued to use their traditional channel numbers after the transition from analog TV to digital TV, even though the stations are no longer broadcasting on the old frequencies. However, among the minority who adjusted their dates of birth to match the new calendar (which was 11 days off the old one and moved New Year's from 25 March to 1 January) was George Washington.

So, instead of 11 Feb 1731, we now remember the date the same way as the man himself: 22 Feb 1732.

Fragment of a Song Parody: "Send in the Cats"

You may be aware of "Send in the Clowns," the old Stephen Sondheim standard from the show A Little Night Music, which was popularized in a recording by Judy Collins in the mid-1970s.

The song is the lament of one of the female characters, an aging actress now reduced to the small town touring circuit, for all her missed opportunities at having a successful relationship with an old flame. The "bridge" of the song goes:

Just when I'd stopped opening doors
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines. . .
No one is there.

Some years ago, I came up with the following bridge for a parody I like to call "Send in the Cats":

Why won't they just open the door
So I can go in and out, like I used to, before?
Making my entrance again with my tail in the air,
Knowing it's time
To hork up some hair. . . .

You be the judge. . . .

Out on a Limb

I'm going out on a limb here. 


In my opinion, these are the major reasons - in no particular order - why Mitt Romney has yet to wrap up the Republican nomination for President (aside, of course, from the fact that, however obscenely overlong that "process" has already schlepped on, it's still "early days" for the national campaign): 


1. The Mormon thing (which shouldn't matter, but probably will to a large segment of the GOP base);


2. How shall I put this? He comes across as a life-size robotic Ken doll. Too blunt?

How about this one: If you put Romney in a line-up with Al Gore and John Kerry, Romney would come across as the wooden one?


3. People have this idea of Romney as a political man-whore who'll say anything to get elected, largely because . . . no, let's not go there. 

SOMETIMES


Sometimes it's easier to know that something is wrong
than to tell what it is
or how to fix it.

Sometimes it's easier to say what you think you can hold
than what you can achieve
or how to get there.

Sometimes it's easier to tell what you can't bear to face
than to express what you want
or make it happen.

Sometimes you find yourself missing a home
that you've never been to
and aren't sure it exists.

Sometimes you find that you're just worn out
fighting the same battle
for the five hundredth time -- because

Sometimes it's easier to know that something is wrong
than to tell what it is
or how to fix it.

What a wonderful thing it is that, for almost all of us, there are people in this world who can inspire our nobler imaginings, open our eyes to hitherto undreamt-of possibilities, correct or ameliorate many of the shortcomings of our less-than-stellar families, steady us at the lowest ebb of our spirits and our courage, and help us blossom into the people we wish we always were -- in short, what a wondrous thing it is that we have friends.

A Bit of Fun

This is a song parody I penned last year, to the tune of the old Elton John song "Daniel." 

Those of us who have graciously been allowed by cats to live in their houses (well, that's the cats' story) know that the furry felines will deny all knowledge of feeding or other essential care from their pet humans if the cats believe that they can deceive their humans into feeding them. This is one example of typical cat spiel.

The cats say they're starving

and we just don't care

Moonshadow says they've not eaten

in living memory. . . .

Oh, and he should know;

he's starved long enough

Never fed or petted:

boy, they have it so rough

Their coats are all shiny

with neglect;

the few times we feed them, it's that

dry cat food drek –

bleah! – and it's no wonder

they hork up that stuff

Never fed or petted:

boy, they have it so rough

Oh – oh – oh

Horribilific!

It's a dish with no food

so they still feel the pangs

of that blackest of moods;

They turned their heads

and they see want instead

of something they can eat

[They're sleek from starvation. . . .]

Oh – oh – oh

Horribilific!

It's a dish with no food

so they still feel the pangs

of that blackest of moods;

They turned their heads

and they see want instead

of something they can eat

[They're sleek from starvation. . . .]

The cats say they're starving

and we just don't care

Moonshadow says they've not eaten

in living memory. . . .

Oh, and he should know;

he's starved long enough

Never fed or petted:

boy, they have it so rough

Never fed or petted:

boy, they have it so rough. . . .