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