THIS HOMAGE WE PAY to the dog is nothing new. She has maintained a presence in literature consistently since man was first able to record his thoughts. I suspect that an image of the dog, or something like the dog, was painted on cave walls. It seems we can’t get enough of them, these creatures that are so purely themselves, that love with such genuine effervescence. The following passage was written, not about a man or a woman in love, nor was it written about the mechanism of worship in the human heart, in spite of how precise an image it makes. It was written about a dog.

It [love] manifested itself to him as a void in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamored to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.  

—Jack London, White Fang

As you can see, this is not just another portrait of warmth and loyalty. The devoted life will ask much more than that. The springs of life are deep, and for too many of us, untouched. Life by toleration, and not by enjoyment. Unaware that there is anything more, we too often limit ourselves to the shallows, and deny what is so very close to us, that which is perhaps one surrender, one small death beyond our reach.

Genuine love is severe. It is costly, the way as treacherous as it is narrow and steep. But we are not left to our own devices. Not trusting us to figure love out for ourselves, Christ showed us how it was to be done. Having botched it so completely as we are given to do, he showed us what love looks like, how it behaves, the submission it demands, the surrender it cannot do without. He came that we might see the divine within each of us; that we might know what authenticity means. At the cost of his own life, he bought back heaven for us, and with it bought back our truest humanity. There is no better image of love. Outside of that, nature has given us the dog.  

 

Adaptation from Chapter One — SO INEVITABLY DOG