Otto
Otto is my son's family's dog. He was rescued after 3 other families returned him to the shelter. My daughter-in-law, a good Catholic as well as a good dog person, has kept Otto for 10 years. The Pope has recommended her for saint-hood for this achievement. There is something wrong with Otto. He can't learn. He had no concern for the needs of others, he barks, he attacks other dogs, he will eat anything that resembles food if he can get to it, and he jumps up on people continuously. The only thing positive to say about him is that he doesn't bite people he knows.
On Wednesdays I take my grand-daughter Frances to her piano lessons. In the hour before her lesson we get a snack and talk. Frances is in the 3rd grade but our conversations are equivalent to talking to a 14 year old. A couple days ago we had what Frances calls an argument. She was defending Otto. She knows I don't like him and she does. We didn't yell at each other, we just stated the things about Otto that we liked or didn't like. She likes his snuggling with her, his loyalty, his playfulness. I compared him to a roommate who talks too loudly, who eats any food you leave around, who gets too close to your face when he talks to you, who argues with your friends that come to visit. It was a draw.
Yesterday in the paper I read that Ralph Reed, the head of the fundamentalist christian coalition, was threatening the Republican with a born-again christian boycott of the mid-term elections if Kavanaugh was confirmed as the next biased Supreme Court Justice. Fundamentalist christians want a christian legal system in spite of the fact that we have a secular government, a separation of church and state. Fundamentalist are christians first, Americans second. My bias against organized religion flared and I thought about blogging against this anti-American stance. But then I began to exam my own biased view, about both christians and Otto.
Catholics, value people (and dogs apparently) for being alive and not for being useful - a non-utilitarian attitude. This attitude reflects the view that there is a lot about how the world works that we do not understand and cannot engineer. Central planning by the Russian Communist Party is a good example - also a godless state. I am not for god, but I am for not being too confident that there is not some value in things that seem, on the surface, useless. So this brings us back to Otto.
I reflected back to an unfortunate conversation I had as a resident in pediatrics about the value of children with Down's syndrome. We were talking about why this genetic abnormality persisted in humans when it produced such low or non-functional and long lived people; sweet but difficult. I said that perhaps we needed these low functioning people to remind us to be kind, to forget about ourselves in the service to others, to express our altruism. Unfortunately the person I said this to had, unknown to me, given up a child with Down's syndrome to an institution for the handicapped. Never-the-less I still subscribe to that attitude. If I was given the choice to abort a child because they had Down's I would choose to abort it, not believing that a fetus is a person. But once they are here, I am happy and willing to accept them into the human fraternity as an equal member.
Otto, perhaps I owe you. Perhaps you were sent to me by fate to teach me something about kindness, to remind me that we can't plan everything, to teach me patience.
On Wednesdays I take my grand-daughter Frances to her piano lessons. In the hour before her lesson we get a snack and talk. Frances is in the 3rd grade but our conversations are equivalent to talking to a 14 year old. A couple days ago we had what Frances calls an argument. She was defending Otto. She knows I don't like him and she does. We didn't yell at each other, we just stated the things about Otto that we liked or didn't like. She likes his snuggling with her, his loyalty, his playfulness. I compared him to a roommate who talks too loudly, who eats any food you leave around, who gets too close to your face when he talks to you, who argues with your friends that come to visit. It was a draw.
Yesterday in the paper I read that Ralph Reed, the head of the fundamentalist christian coalition, was threatening the Republican with a born-again christian boycott of the mid-term elections if Kavanaugh was confirmed as the next biased Supreme Court Justice. Fundamentalist christians want a christian legal system in spite of the fact that we have a secular government, a separation of church and state. Fundamentalist are christians first, Americans second. My bias against organized religion flared and I thought about blogging against this anti-American stance. But then I began to exam my own biased view, about both christians and Otto.
Catholics, value people (and dogs apparently) for being alive and not for being useful - a non-utilitarian attitude. This attitude reflects the view that there is a lot about how the world works that we do not understand and cannot engineer. Central planning by the Russian Communist Party is a good example - also a godless state. I am not for god, but I am for not being too confident that there is not some value in things that seem, on the surface, useless. So this brings us back to Otto.
I reflected back to an unfortunate conversation I had as a resident in pediatrics about the value of children with Down's syndrome. We were talking about why this genetic abnormality persisted in humans when it produced such low or non-functional and long lived people; sweet but difficult. I said that perhaps we needed these low functioning people to remind us to be kind, to forget about ourselves in the service to others, to express our altruism. Unfortunately the person I said this to had, unknown to me, given up a child with Down's syndrome to an institution for the handicapped. Never-the-less I still subscribe to that attitude. If I was given the choice to abort a child because they had Down's I would choose to abort it, not believing that a fetus is a person. But once they are here, I am happy and willing to accept them into the human fraternity as an equal member.
Otto, perhaps I owe you. Perhaps you were sent to me by fate to teach me something about kindness, to remind me that we can't plan everything, to teach me patience.
It’s a part of wisdom to realize that the most annoying things in life are often the things we learn and grow the most from... particularly other people’s annoying behavior. Nevertheless I wouldn’t seek to spend more time with people who annoy me. Except for family and friends. And co-workers. Hmmm, that includes pretty much everyone, doesn’t it?
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