CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
ALL CREATURES
HERE BELOW
The New Yorker had a picture on its cover in February 1968 of a group of people looking at sleeping puppies in a pet shop window. Every face was alight, and the women, of course, were tapping on the glass, trying to elicit some response from the fetching little beagles in the pen.
What is it we see in the faces of puppies? What else in the whole world instantly softens the expressions of the hardest people as does the sight of a little puppy trotting gaily along the sidewalk? Is there something eternal, some intimation of unutterable sweetness there, which we know will be gone in a matter of weeks? We want to get our hands on the softness; we crave response. People who would not dream of addressing a stranger on the street will address a puppy and then often, as though they cannot help themselves, the owner of the puppy as well.
Some years ago my husband and I bought a tiny purebred Scottish terrier. He had a box-shaped body on which black fur grew in the shape of a horse blanket, shaggy and shiny. He had another smaller box for a head, with jaunty chin whiskers, wonderfully bright black eyes and a glistening black nose. His ears pointed sharply, and he moved them up, sideways and back-he could even revolve them-depending on whether he was looking, listening or waiting hopefully to be petted. His tail was a little cone in almost constant motion. His feet were like short flanges at the ends of his unbelievably short legs. His legs were, in fact, just barely long enough to keep his chin off the floor.
The dog's name was MacPhearce. He had a terrier's feistiness and could bark sharply or growl like a tenor gargling, but was putting on an act ("Is he trained to kill on command?" a man on the street asked), for he was really very affectionate and badly wanted friends.
I put a blue collar on him and took him out on a blue leash. (He did not, however, wear a plaid coat or rubbers. It seemed logical to me that the coat he came with was designed for his needs.) People would catch a glimpse of him and stop in their tracks. "Look at this dog!" they would say, if they anyone with them to say it to, or, "Isn't he adorable?" they would say to me. People under 40 often said, "What kind of dog is that?" and people over 40 said, "Oh, a Scotty! You don't see many of them anymore!" MacPhearce was not aware that he had gone out of style. He had been succeeded by Boston terriers, then by poodles and boxers and Lhasa apsos. But it never bothered him much, and he behaved as though he was exactly what he was meant to be, which is more that can be said of some human beings. One said, "Ooohhh-I can't stand it, he's so cute!"
I wonder if God felt anything like that on the day He created such creatures. "It is very good" is what He is reported to have said (see Gen. 1:20-25), and I suppose we cannot expect the Almighty to have been thrilled, or even impressed. It was exactly what He had meant. The animal was the living proof of the divine idea.
MacPhearce was not a sinner, theologically speaking, and therefore fulfilled God's intention for him every moment of his life. My husband wrote years ago about a dog he had named Lassie. He believed that she had been "assigned" to him. It was her business to keep him happy, and perhaps of all the marvelous things dogs do for humans (herding sheep, retrieving birds, pulling sleds, leading the blind, rescuing the freezing or the drowning), none is more marvelous than this: They are comforters and companions. They think always of their master. What is he or she doing? Can I accompany him or her? Is my master happy? How can I cheer him or her?
A woman I know found her teenaged daughter lying on the living room rug one evening, sobbing into the curly fur of their cocker spaniel. The mother had on many occasions wondered if the dog was worth all the fuss and trouble of training, feeding and cleaning fur off the rugs and furniture. She stopped wondering when she saw that the dog was a refuge and a friend to the child when she would have found it impossible to cry on anyone's shoulder. The mother made up her mind then and there that as long as she had children, at least, she would have a dog. (She has since decided that even she needs him.)
My old friend Dorothy who lives on the Cape has had dachshunds, terriers, poodles and a Scotty. "Oh my, they give so much," she says, "and they ask so little!"
C. S. Lewis had some lovely things to say about animals in his Letters to an American Lady. "I will never laugh at anyone for grieving over a loved beast. I think God wants us to love him more, not to love creatures (even animals) less. No person, animal, flower, or even pebble, has ever been loved too much-i.e., more than every one of God's works deserves."
In another letter he wrote, "We were talking about cats and dogs the other day and decided that both have consciences but the dog, being an honest, humble person, always has a bad one, but the cat is a Pharisee and always has a good one. When he sits and stares you out of countenance he is thanking god that he is not as these dogs, or these humans, or even as these other cats!"
A dog can gaze with adoration and not be embarrassed, but if he finds himself gazed at by a group not entirely sympathetic, he seems to know this and will often busy himself with licking a paw, or will perhaps decide that he has business elsewhere. He accepts himself for what he is, and us human beings for whatever we may be, and thus teaches us a lesson in the grace of acceptance. Dogs can adapt themselves to whatever treatment we may dish out. If we step on a tail by accident its owner may yelp but will be wagging it at once in forgiveness. A dog's eyes may be filled with reproach if we have left him alone too long, if we go out in the car and tell him to stay, or if his dinner is late, but the reproach is gentle and loving, and he will come and lay his head in our lap 70 times seven.
A truck went by the house the other day labeled Old Mother Hubbard Oven-Baked Dog Foods and Laboratory Diets. The pet food business is an enormous and lucrative one. Any pet shop displays a staggering variety of feeding dishes, foods, toys, medicines, shampoos, flea soaps and powders, beds, baskets, carrying cases, cages, leashes, collars-some of them rhinestone-studded-and garments, including galoshes and raincoats for poodles. We insult our pets by not allowing them to be animals. We violate their being when we try to make them human.
"Love the pride of your dogs," wrote Isak Dinesen. "Let them not grow fat." Put not on them outrageous frippery, I would add. Pamper them not with furniture and food luxurious for people but indecent for animals. Recognize what they are, love them for that, let them love you because you love them for what they are and not because you have made of them a poor facsimile of yourself.
George MacDonald, the Scottish preacher and novelist of the nineteenth century, believed that "dogs always behold the face of the Father." To study a dog's face will make you wonder about the redemption of all creation. Do dogs have souls? We have no clue to that in Scripture. We are told, however, that "everything that exists in Heaven or earth should find its perfection and fulfillment in him [Christ]" (Eph. 1:10, Phillips).
A lady once asked Dr. Harry Ironside of Moody Church in Chicago about the salvation of dogs. She was heartbroken over the death of her little white dog, and was not sure she would be able to enjoy heaven at all if he was not going to be there. "Madam," replied Dr. Ironside, "if when you get to heaven you want your little white dog, I can assure you that he will be there."
What the "perfection and fulfillment" of little white dogs or little black puppies named MacPhearce may mean is not, for us at any rate, a very important question. But it may remind us of unspeakably important questions. Responsibility to our Creator. Obedience to His call. Fulfillment of His purpose for us as men and women who have been given the mandate to take care of the Earth. Then we can join with all creatures great and small, and even with the stars of the firmament of which Joseph Addison wrote in 1712:
In reason's ear they all rejoice and utter forth a glorious voice:
Forever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine."
CHAPTER I 0
FIVE KIDS AND PEACE
The house was large, white, set well back from the street, and surrounded with lawns, gardens and beautiful big trees-the sort of place that could easily keep a full-time gardener busy. It was nearly suppertime of an autumn afternoon, and as my hostess, who had met me at the airport, took me through the side door and into the kitchen, I could smell beef stew and wood smoke, just the sort of things I wanted to smell in a place like that. We went through a large hall with a beautiful staircase and into a small sitting room where a fire burned and three boys were sprawled prone on the floor, two of them playing a game, one reading.
"Boys, I want you to meet Mrs. Leitch."
All three were on their feet at once, coming toward me to shake hands. Not only were they not reluctant or surly, they acted as though they were sincerely glad to see me.
After I was shown my room I Joined Arlita, my hostess, in the kitchen to help with supper. She set about making biscuits while I cut up apples for Waldorf salad. A few minutes before supper was ready a couple of the boys appeared and in no time had set the table, poured the milk and carried in the food.
The dining room had an elegant fireplace and mantelpiece, a bay window filled with plants and an enormous round cherry table. Joe, who is a doctor, sat opposite the fireplace with his wife at his side. I sat across from them and between us the four sons and one daughter, ages 9 to 16. We all clasped hands for grace. Conversation ranged from schoolwork, the church, the neighbors, the old house a few blocks away where I used to live, to mathematics and the meaning of a passage of Scripture. All participated. All also took it upon themselves to see to the comfort of their guest, passing me the biscuits, the jam, the salt, asking if I'd have another bowl of stew and filling my water glass. It seemed that each child understood that he or she was on the entertainment committee. The fact that I was a contemporary of their parents did not absolve them of gracious responsibility. They were even eager to look after me, eager to hear what I had to say.
The dining room doesn't have an observation window with one-way glass to which I can take certain parents I can think of to observe this model family, seated around the cherry table, alert yet relaxed, disciplined yet hilarious, attentive yet at ease. And of course the family would object very strenuously to anyone's holding them up as a model. Yet they are. All families, in the last analysis, are models-of something. Some of cosmos, that wonderful Greek word which signifies order and arrangement. Some of chaos, its oppositedisorder and confusion.
At the end of the meal everybody sang. I can't remember what gospel songs they sang, but I remember the hearty way they all joined in. Then Joe read the Bible. They talked about what it meant. The youngest son was asked first to explain what he thought it was all about and was then challenged, corrected and encouraged by siblings and parents. Joe asked for prayer requests and each child thought of somebody he wanted prayed for-a schoolmate who seemed hungry to know God, a Jewish lady whose husband had died, a kid on drugs. When the prayers were finished Joe and Arlita and I went to the sitting room to talk by the fire. All was quiet. I was dimly aware of movement in the other rooms-the table being cleared, dishes washed. Later I heard a piano and a flute. People were practicing, homework was undoubtedly being done, but all of it without strife, without one interruption to the parents who, so far as I noticed, had issued no instructions to anybody when we got up from the table.
Later in the evening I noted the stillness.
"Are the kids in bed?" I asked.
"What time is it?" Arlita said.
"10:45."
"Then they're in bed. Usually we say goodnight to them, but occasionally when we have company they don't come down."
This almost took my breath away. I've visited in a good many homes where the going-to-bed routine takes the better part of the evening, with wheedling, threats, pleas, prolonged negotiations and eventual capitulation.
How, I wanted to know, do you do it? Such order, such peace, such fun as everyone seemed to have and such smooth running of oiled wheels. I grew up in a family where the same things could have been said, but that was another generation, another day. Walking still occurred to people as a possibility if they had to get somewhere, and it was still acceptable simply to sit on the porch some evenings and not go anywhere. So how, in this day and age, did Joe and Arlita do it?
They looked at each other as though the question had not arisen before. Arlita smiled.
"Well . . ." she hesitated, trying to think how they did do it. "I'm sure we did just what you did. We decided how we wanted it to be and then we did it that way. Isn't that right, Joe?"
"That's right. In fact, we decided before the children were born how we wanted things to be. The goingto-bed business, for example. I don't want to hate my kids, and if I had them in my hair all evening, if I had to fight to get them down and fight to get them up again in the morning, I'd hate them. So after they've reached eight or nine years of age we don't tell them when they have to go to bed. We tell them when they have to be at the breakfast table. We give them each an alarm clock, and if they know they have to be washed, dressed, combed, in their right minds and in their places at 7:30, they soon figure out for themselves when to go to bed and when to get up."
It worked. Next morning, which was Saturday, the children were downstairs to do their appointed tasks. At 7:30 A.M. we sat down to sausage, fried apples, scrambled eggs, coffee cake, orange juice and coffee. Arlita had not cooked the breakfast, the kids had. They had organized things so that the whole job was done in a quarter of an hour or so. The table was set, the food on it, hot and appetizing, on time.
Does the system ever break down? I wanted to know. There are lapses, Joe and Arlita said, and privileges sometimes have to be withdrawn, but there's a lot of camaraderie in doing the jobs, and everybody likes to see it work. I had never seen a more beautifully ordered home, and neither had I ever seen a betteradjusted, more likable and outgoing bunch of kids. There must be a connection.
A house the size of theirs needs a lot of maintenance. Nobody comes in to cook, clean or garden. The whole family works. A list of special jobs is posted every so often-woodcutting, window washing, floor waxing, the sort of jobs that aren't done every weekand the children sign up for whatever they're willing to tackle. Then each child makes out a three-by-five card for each job and puts down the time he spent at it. The card is then submitted to a parent who inspects the finished task and signs the card if he approves the quality of the work. If he does not sign it, the child does the job over on his own time. Cards are turned in at the end of the month and the children are paid the going rate. With the money he earns, each buys his own clothes, except for the youngest, who puts half his money in the bank against the day when he too must take the responsibility for buying clothes.
"We're all working for each other this way." Joe said, "each taking responsibility as he's able. They're not paid, of course, for daily jobs like bedmaking and tablesetting and dishwashing. But last month we paid for 125 hours of `special' jobs."
Stravinsky in his Poetics of Music refers to "the anguish into which an unrestricted freedom plunges me." Unrestricted freedom-anguish. Their opposites, discipline and serenity, characterized the home I've described. But it took thought. It took vision. It took courage to lay the burden on the children, strength to support them in it, humility to submit to the rule of life, and an ear tuned to a different drummer from the one the world hears.