If you have ever deeply loved a pet, you will resonate with this story. We had a little dog named Banjo. He was a “Chi-Weenie” – a mutt, really, but with some Dachshund and Chihuahua influence. When my kids were in Middle School, they made it known that they wanted a lap dog. Well, it was our daughter Laiken’s dream to have a lap dog. We had a huge dog at the time, named Chico (which of course means small), weighing in at around 120 pounds before we scaled back the jerky treats... Lynne did not want another dog, thinking the caring and feeding would largely fall on her. CrossWalker Trudy Brutsche was rescuing a litter or pups and invited us to come take a look. Banjo sort of chose us. The kids and I won out, and we brought home a teeny, little puppy, somewhat to Lynne’s chagrin. To make things easier, I brought the puppy with me to work for a couple of weeks (this is before we had to stop allowing dogs on campus). My noon Praxis group got to cuddle with him, bringing a lot of love and joy. Incredibly, Banjo somehow knew which Shaw family member he needed to win over – Lynne. Long story short, before too long Lynne was head over heels in love with Banjo. She was his favorite. She would never again sit on the couch alone. We would never again have a bed to ourselves!
When I was on a trip to Africa to visit a mission that CrossWalk supported, Lynne shared terrible news with me when I called home. Banjo was not well. It turns out he had an auto-immune condition that affected his central nervous system. Without help he would not be able to walk. With help, there was a chance we’d have him with us for a year or so. We chose to help, which meant that every month we would take him to UC Davis on back-to-back days, twice each day to get a shot that was used to fight cancer but was also effective at keeping the swelling around his central nervous system down. The treatment cost a lot of money and time, but it worked! Banjo remained a part of our family.
The Banjo years saw a lot of change in our lives, and a lot of challenges that come with raising two very busy kids through their teenage years. Banjo was there to provide comfort when Chico died. Banjo was there to provide grief support when our beloved Karen died, who was a much of a grandma to our kids as their biological family members. Other stressors crept in as well, and Banjo remained his loving, little self. He acted as a conduit of love somehow that calmed things down when things were difficult.
We had agreed from the beginning that we didn’t want Banjo to suffer, and that we would keep up his treatments so long as he could “be a dog.” We had watched a neighbor keep his dog alive too long, in our opinion, because he couldn’t let go. We wanted Banjo to live only if his quality of life was sustained. The time came when it couldn’t be any longer. We traveled one last time to UC Davis where the staff knew and loved him after five years of treatment. I held him as he drew his last breath. I felt his heart stop. I have never experienced greater sorrow. This shocked me, because I’ve lost very important people in my life who I have dearly loved. Maybe it was in part because I was holding him, or maybe it was the absence he left us with. I don’t know.
When we got home, we sat in the quiet sadness of grief, together, in our back yard. As we mourned, a white moth flittered by, playing off the breeze. We hadn’t ever seen a white moth in our back yard before, so it caught our attention. It felt like any time we were down for the days and week s ahead, that white moth would show up. Call us weird, but we placed meaning on the visit. We embraced it as some sort of sign of love that brought comfort, sort of like a white dove representing the Spirit of God descending on followers. Even though we know it’s a moth, whenever we see a white moth, we call it Banjo. We accept the presence of the moth as a gift from God, a reminder that love lives on. Every instance a reminder of the love we had and shared for our beloved dog. Was God in any way part of this?
What do we do with “spiritual experiences” where we feel like we’re encountering some aspect of the divine? Is this just wishful thinking? Since the Scientific Revolution, as a culture we have become more and more rationally oriented as we have come to understand how the world works. So much so that when people speak of spiritual experiences, feelings, or things like I described above, they can be written off as wishful thinking, emotional nonsense, or just hogwash. I get it. Our culture’s rational bias has made me wonder the same. Am I nuts or is there really something happening that appears to be a divine interaction of some sort?
Our Jewish ancestors were quite intentional in their story craft. Their primary name attributed to God - by far - was Yahweh. As we noted last week, Yahweh as a word is more of a verb than a noun. I AM WHAT I AM refers to a presence that has been in the past, present, and future that flows and is constantly around, like wind. Ruach, the Hebrew word for Spirit, also refers to wind and breath. These are things that are experienced for than something you can turn into an object. Perhaps this might be why making an idol representing God was forbidden – it cannot be done and also severely impedes our understanding of what we’re talking about.
Stories of a breathy, windy God show up in powerful ways in the Bible. Creation in Genesis 1. The story of the parting of the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds) during the Exodus. Elijah’s hearing God in the sound of silence (where he could only hear his own breath). Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones becoming alive again only after receiving the wind-breath of God. Peter seeing the wind that was allowing him to walk on water and freaking out, sinking. And Pentecost, with the sound of wind filling the room (along with tongues of fire and new tongues of language) all representing the Spirit’s overwhelming, unmistakable presence for all. These are just a few of the mystical experiences from our deep tradition. The ancient world had no problem with such encounters – the world itself seemed magical.
Today, we struggle with such whimsy. But should we? It seems to me that there will always be a tension between our experiences of Divine Breath and our rational minds wanting to discount it. Surely even in the magical past the tension was also pronounced. How was Abraham feeling about a strong sense of divine call leading his to start fresh in a new land? Or Moses sensing a call to return to Egypt? Or Jesus saying yes to a countercultural, counter intuitive vision that would cost his life?
We will never be rid of the tension. We’re going to have to deal with that. For those who are “all in” on mystical experiences, we need to embrace community who might help discern our experiences, so we don’t do something that is really stupid and overly driven by ego. For those who are so questioning of Yahweh’s presence that they are practically deaf and blind to what they are swimming in, we need community to help recognize where the breeze of the divine has already been blowing in their lives to perhaps open their ears and eyes to things that have always been and will forever be. Insights on either side of the spectrum cannot be forced, and so we must walk together in humility and grace, following the breeze that will always feel like shalom, will always encourage shalom, and will always direct us tows shalom.
Today, may you catch the breezy breath of Yahweh that is always blowing.