The Book Says

It’s really a magazine

for people who

want to know

more about training

a boxer puppy.

It covers topics

such as “6 Games for Good manners.”

“No More Clowning Around:

Serious Solutions for Everyday Issues:

Jumping, Pulling, Barking, Chewing, and more!”

Now this magazine

has become a source

of contention in our house.

The more Jill reads it,

the more we hear about

what she reads.

She begins every sentence

with the phrase, “The book says …”

The book says,

“Do not let them jump on you.

Do not give them any attention

until all four feet are on the ground.”

“Do not allow them on the furniture unless invited.”

The other night we

we’re taking the puppies on a walk

and I discovered another truth

about puppy training.

I realize that not only

is she training the puppies,

she’s training me.

One block into our walk,

she says to me,

as I’m allowing Izzy

to walk in front of me,

“The book says not to let them

walk in front of you.”

I said, “First off it’s not a book.

It’s a magazine.

You tell the book

to come help you walk the puppies.”

This is when she

rephrased her comment,

almost as if the book told her

I would say this.

She says, “We are in training

as much as the puppies are,

and the ‘Book said,

The heart of the champion

beats inside your Boxer,

and with our guidance

he’ll be a contender too.’”

We were rounding the

corner headed toward

First Baptist when she said,

“No. It’s true. The book said

to think about how

a real boxer trains.

He learns from his trainer

when to jab, when to defend,

what to eat and

which exercises to do.

Your Boxer is the same.

He knows when to bark,

jump, and chase,

but he doesn’t know

when it is appropriate to do it.”

“Please,” I said. “Give me a break.”

We’d reached the park

by the Old State Bank.

She turned and said,

“Show me how you walked

both of them at the same time

while I was gone to Cancun.”

I said, “It’s in the book

under the title:

“How to Walk Both Puppies

If Your Wife Runs Off to Cancun.”

“The book doesn’t have that article,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“You don’t have to live

by a book to know

how to train puppies.”

“Believe me,” she said.

“You need the book.”

And I think this is what

perturbs me about the book.

I don’t like being forced

into its mentality where Boxers

are like Prize fighters.

But the book works.

That’s for sure.

Today, Jill asked where her

book was because

she’d lost it.

We told her we

didn’t know,

but I know,

and I’m not telling.

 

Puppy Fight

The puppies have been chasing

each other around the yard.

They run until tackled

by one or the other.

Sometimes the impact

scares me.

They hit tables, chairs,

the side of the pool.

This goes on until

one gets too rough,

and the other one

gets mad, then

they fight.

This is when I

step in as the parent,

as the leader of the pack.

I tell them

to stop.

I usually

yell this.

Sometimes two or three times.

This just happened

a few minutes ago.

Kerouac was chasing Izzy,

who had an old shoe

in her mouth,

taunting Kerouac,

saying, “Na, nana, boo, boo."

And Kerouac took the bait.

He snapped for it.

But Izzy was too fast—she’s always

faster than him, and she

took off running

through the Redneck Rivera.

But things changed during this chase.

Kerouac tackled Izzy.

She did not like

being tackled by him,

so she gave him

a couple of combinations

left, right, left, right.

Just like that.

This is why they

call them Boxers.

But their growls

were deeper, angrier,

until a full-blown fight

had broken out.

So I stepped in and stopped the fight.

They both backed off.

They stared one

another down.

Both had set eyes, set jaws,

and I figured

the fight would

begin again.

But they both squatted

and peed, and then

started playing again.

It was hilarious—unexpected.

I laughed, not knowing

what the simultaneous peeing meant.

Maybe it’s a white flag,

a truce in a puppy fight,

in a puppy world.

I’m not sure.

But we have these

kinds of fights in churches.

A lot of growling, someone gets too rough,

someone gets their

feelings hurt or

we try a few power plays,

take a few swings,

a combination—gossip, insult, gossip, insult.

Just like that.

Then we blow up.

We get a little mad.

And it escalates into a

full-blown church fight.

We’re no different than puppies--

brothers and sisters

in the Lord. We can

fight and taunt

and do all manner

of things

to get our way.

Church can be

a nasty place.

Innocent people get hurt.

Because there’s never a

right or wrong

in a church fight.

Just people being misunderstood.

Just people being stupid

with God’s love.

So the next time

we feel tempted

to fight, to argue,

and be like pups,

let’s just faceoff

and pee.

All of us will

feel relieved.

Sound crude?

I thought so too.

James 4:1
[ Submit Yourselves to God ] What causes

fights and quarrels among you?

Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?

Cancun

When our friends from Nashville called from Cancun, Mexico, we did not recognize the number, because who calls from Cancun, Mexico to offer you a free trip? No one. That’s who. But every now and then the gods smile upon Jill. Never me. Only Jill. Because it was our old friends from Nashville, the ones who can afford to offer Jill a free week in Cancun.

Our friends, Todd and Sheri, had already been in Cancun for a week with one more free week to go in their timeshare. But Todd had to go back to work, and Sheri asked him if Jill could come down would he let her stay the extra free week. He said yes, and this is how Jill got a free, guilt-free trip to Cancun, Mexico.

Immediately after I told Jill she could go, she started feeling guilty, she started saying how she just couldn’t bear leaving me for a week to take care of the puppies alone. But I told her I’d be okay, that I could work two jobs, take care of two puppies and two teenage girls, of which one was my daughter, the other a friend of my daughter who came for a few days.

No problem, I said. Piece of cake. Go. Go sit in the sun. Go drink you a few drinks. Go relax. Go get a suntan. Go eat Mexican every night of the week. Go rest up. No pressure here. I can handle everything. And the catch was she had to make a haste decision. She had to tell them within an hour or Sheri was going home with Todd.

They called on a Friday, and last Saturday I drove her to the airport. She flew away. For one week. Leaving me at home alone. Now, in my mind, I figured I could get some writing done.

But I arrived back home from the airport, and the puppies were there, looking up at me with those puppy dog eyes, those eyes that said, “You stupid man. We are going to run you ragged. I pity the fool,” I heard one say to the other one. And their little plan was to make me suffer as if this was some Hollywood movie.

It started when I took them for a walk. Dogs their size need exercise—lots of exercise. Plenty of exercise. Because if you fail to give them exercise, they jump on the couch, jump on the bed. They run around the house, bumping into furniture.

So I told myself, “How hard can it be, right?”

Then I learned a hard lesson, “I’m not the Dog Whisperer.” I’m not a good leader of the pack, in fact, I’m not even in the pack, that’s how far back I am. But I figured I could handle them. So I hooked up the leashes. I put a few grocery bags in my pocket to clean-up after them. Then I headed out.

I met Sloan in the living room, and she said, “Don’t tell me you are going to take them walking. It’ll never work.”

There’s nothing like a child telling you that you can’t control two puppies. So I thought you watch me. “It can be done,” I told her.

Halfway down the block I realized that they were packing way too much hormones for a man who no longer had any hormones. With every step, they wanted to tangle up and roughhouse. They were having the time of their lives. Daddy was taking them on a walk. A little one-to-one time with Daddy.

I wanted to turnaround. Go home. Forget this crazy notion of mine. Then I heard Sloan’s voice. “That’ll never work.” And I wasn’t going to be proven wrong, not by a teenager.

So we continued, and the dogs walked me instead of me walking the dogs. It was as if this was the part in the Hollywood movie where the puppy owner is dragged around the neighborhood. Always remember that eight feet can move a lot faster than two feet.

But we made it past First Baptist and to the park in front of the Old State Bank with only a smattering of laughter from those who happened to see us, and my plan was to take them to the park and wear their little puppy feet out. Tongues would be wagging when I got through with them.

And it calmed them down. Not much, but a noticeable change. So I was confident that we could continue our walk around the neighborhood. I even took Bank Street. Walked right past Simp McGee’s. That’s how confident I was at this point. Then we came to the School Board building on Bank Street, and an element of the walk I’d forgotten about hit me like smelling sauce. Izzy did her business on school property’s lawn.

And no matter what you think of the School Board, you can’t leave poo on the lawn. Some people were watching. And you know how a dog acts after a business trip on the lawn. They get all excited. They are lighter. They are ready to run. They are ready to roughhouse again. But there is a city ordinance that states, “You must not poo on School property, and if you do, then you best clean-up after your dog.”

And this put me in a sticky situation, I had to hold two puppies—puppies that weigh thirty-two pounds each, so I had sixty pounds of torque pulling one arm while I was trying to get the plastic bag from my pocket. Then I had to bend down, trap the poo beneath a bag and scoop like a crane, leaving the barest of remains on the ground. Then fold bag, tie bag, and dispose of bag. This is how it works.

Have you ever tried to bend down and extend one arm while being yanked with sixty pounds of weight in another direction? Neither had I. I stooped, went to trap the poo, but right before I trapped it, the dogs gave an immense yank on the leashes, and I dragged across it. I tried again. This time I got it. But you cannot tie a poo bag with one hand. It doesn’t work like that. So there I was with a handful.

Kerouac and Izzy

The Oasis

My father met

his future wife

at a bar named

The Oasis.

A palm tree was plastered

on the sign.

Fluorescent lights

lined the eaves of

the building outside,

giving it a glow

for thirsty travelers.

I’m not sure why

my father was there

drinking.

He was supposed to be

deer hunting.

I guess he

had other plans.

Maybe he was in

his own little desert.

Maybe he’d ran too far.

Maybe his soul

was thirsty,

but you can’t drown

your soul in booze.

I watched him try.

He could never

find the spout

for his eternal thirst.

 

When I was little,

maybe five or six,

my parents would

visit relatives

on Sundays

with me in tow.

And we always

passed this place

where a pipe had been

jammed into the side

of a rock bluff,

a place where

spring water flowed

only five feet from the road

across the ditch, and people

were always straddling

the ditch and holding

empty one gallon

milk jugs to catch

the spring water

gushing from the pipe.

My parents always

stopped for a drink.

They would straddle the ditch,

cup their hands, and slurp,

as if it was bad luck

to pass without taking a drink.

I never understood

why they liked this water.

They never appeared younger.

I guess there’s

something about spring water

flowing from a rock bluff and

through a pipe

in Tennessee

that makes you want to stop.

Maybe it harkens back

to another rock

that ushered forth water

for the Children of Israel

after Moses struck the rock.

I’m not sure,

but it shut the Children of Israel up.

It stopped their complaining.

It soothed their parched throats

and offered them hope in the desert.

Yet, we complain today

about not having

the water of success.

We want riches,

comfort and a solid future.

We keep thinking

it will fulfill, but

it never does, and

we wind up

thirstier than before.

 

I’m thirsty.

For what I don’t know.

For Him?

Definitely.

But there’s something

I’m thirsty for

that doesn’t have

a name.

It’s like living water.

It’s like a stream

I want to tap into.

Maybe a certain purpose.

Is there such a thing?

The Pup Tent

I played in the rain

with the puppies.

It was more like

I relaxed in the rain

with the puppies.

They’d crawled into

my lap as I was reading

in my beach lounger.

They fell asleep on me.

I had fifty pounds

of pure puppy

on my chest.

They were so content.

Izzy was snoring.

Kerouac had his muzzle

against my neck.

It was no downpour.

It was drizzling at best.

Above, restless, smoky clouds

were playing bumper cars.

They were mixing, mingling, breaking

apart and coming back together

to form rain clouds,

and we were below

in control of nothing

but our desire to be

there, under them.

I was reading in the rain,

and I should’ve taken myself

and the pups inside.

I have enough sense

to get in out of the rain.

But they were resting so

sweetly upon

my chest and legs

that I did not want

to disturb their sleep,

so we remained

in the drizzle, and

nearby was a beach towel.

I grabbed it.

I covered us up.

I made a pup tent.

We were under it,

and I was quite content.

 

After thirty minutes

of sitting under the

pup tent, we went

inside. I was no longer a child.

And this may be what’s

wrong with me.

I’ve grown old and grumpy.

Gray hair is sprouting.

I’m drying up, so a little

rain can’t hurt me.

Maybe I should sit

in the rain more often.

I need my soul soaked too.

Like Peter, “Not only

my feet, Lord. But wash

all of me.”

The psalmist wanted

soul-thirst, like the deer

that panteth for the water,

so my soul longeth

after Thee.

Jesus offers the

living water, the

eternal drink, the

well that never runneth dry.

Can you run into the desert

and keep running

until it is too late

to notice that you have

no camel,

no humps,

to get you to an oasis?

Am I in the desert

right now?

The Squirrels

Our puppies haven’t noticed

the squirrels yet,

the ones who scurry across

our backyard on a power line,

as if it is the freeway in our neighborhood.

Bono, our previous Boxer,

believed he could

jump high enough

to snap his jaws

on them.

But no matter how many times

I told him he would never

be able to jump that high,

he still believed

the next jump would be the one.

 

Dogs are no different

than humans.

We believe the next moment

will be the one moment

when we catch what

we don’t even need—

our own little squirrels

high above in the trees.

 

For now the squirrels

don’t have to

scurry above our backyard,

across the power line,

across the shed,

across the above ground pool,

across what we call

the Redneck Rivera.

They can walk

now that Bono is

not back there to bark.

But this silence won’t last.

It never does.

Noise is chaos,

ears are strange bedfellows.

One right, one left,

never joining in the middle.

Do they really hear

the same thing?

 

Our lights went out early

one morning. Took the

utility workers three hours

to get them back on.

In the basement

where I write my sermons,

it was too dark to work.

Basements need light.

Darkness and dankness

do their hanky-panky

in basements,

so I climbed the stairs,

looked out the window

in the front room.

To make sure.

That my house

was not the only

one.

 

Later, I saw a utility worker.

He said a squirrel

was electrocuted.

He ate through a line

in the transformer.

I wondered if

the squirrel world

had electrocuted

one of their own.

Maybe a serial killer.

Maybe it’s the fat one,

the one that runs

across the power line

in the Redneck Rivera,

while shaking his tail.

Who knows what

really happened up there?

Do squirrels have funerals?

Maybe they say,

“Here lies Rocky.

He cracked the wrong nut.

Now he’s dead.”

Bo Derek and Dudley Moore

Jill says Kerouac is goofy,

and she keeps telling Izzy how beautiful she is,

but it’s Kerouac that she loves the most.

Kerouac is a lap dog.

He wants to sleep on your chest,

he wants to be right next to you.

Izzy is the direct opposite.

She wants to sleep away from you,

sleep with her head elevated

on a pillow or on her brother.

She is independent,

and when we walk them

around the block,

Izzy looks like Bo Derek

and Kerouac is Dudley Moore.

But it’s Kerouac’s goofiness

that draws us to him,

bends us down,

makes us pick hum up.

Eloquence is attractive,

as if the soul bleeds

through the exterior walls.

But goofiness is inviting.

We can draw close to

imperfection, and I

believe that this

is why Jesus had a

goofiness about him.

Isaiah 53:2 - “He had no beauty

or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance

that we should desire him.”

 

It makes us wonder why

Christ is not attractive?

Maybe it has everything to do with

the fact that goofiness

is a level playing field.

I like having a

goofy Savior.

He’s approachable.

He’s not loved

for his beauty,

but for his heart,

for the way he loves us,

for the way he says,

“Come unto me,

let me pick you up,

all of  you

who are weary and burdened,

and I will give you rest.”

 

We have a tendency

to worship people according

to their superstar status,

according to the way they dance

on “Dancing with the Stars.”

But there was nothing

about Christ’s appearance

that made them ooh and ahh.

It was his love,

it was the way he

loved everyone and healed

even those outside

the Jewish fold.

And today we

cannot see him.

We do not have a vision

of what he looked like.

Pictures depict him

as very Jewish or

black or white or Indian.

We have our pictures,

but Jesus was never

meant to be photographed,

only adored, and maybe

it’s this goofiness

that God loves

in us.

We can only hope

that this is true

because we all

have our ugly and sinister ways

that need to be overshadowed

for the goofiness of God

in Christ Jesus.

Cleaving to Another

Inside were six

boxer puppies—two males,

four females,

and we held the

prettiest female first.

She has a white streak

that curves from her nose

to her back like the road

up the mountain.

The breeder said, “That’s Awesome Blossom.”

He was kind of corny like that.

Then we held a male that

the breeder had short-named

“Dozer,” because he puts his head

down when he approaches you,

like he’s cowering.

“He’s the shy one,” the breeder said.

This is when Jill said,

“I can’t decide. I wish we

could get two.”

The breeder jumped in real quick.

“I’ll give you a deal for two.”

So he gave us one. Two for

the price of one, plus a dollar.

And we headed home

with the two of them

in Jill’s lap. She cuddled them.

We turned the cab light on

after we were a few miles

away from the cabin.

We wanted to get a better look at our

purchase and twelve-year commitment.

We threw out names

on the ride home--

Faulkner, Abbie,

Bonnie and Clyde (that was Jill’s).

We finally decided on naming the girl Izzy,

the boy Kerouac.

 

They slept in the bed with us that night.

(Yes, I know.)

And at one point,

in her dreams, Izzy was

sucking her mother’s teat.

It was so sad.

It made me feel guilty for

separating them from their family.

But no one gets to roost

at home for their entire life.

This world is based upon

the simple principle of separation.

We separate at birth

from the womb.

We leave father and mother.

We cleave to another.

The dissertation of life

is that we fracture

on a daily basis.

We break, we lose

parts of ourselves

along the way.

And we spend the rest of our lives

trying to get back to

the teats of our mother—

that place where safety

felt like paradise.

We are Adam and Eve

banging on the door

of Paradise, wanting

back what we once had,

but it’s not there anymore,

not in the way we once

knew it. So we continue

to break apart, to get further and further

away from Paradise.

Sure, we try to recreate it here,

but this place is only the shadow

of perfection. It can’t be obtained,

no matter how hard we try.

So we dream.

We dream of rivers,

deep, dark, muddy rivers.

Our dreams become raisins

in the sun, dried up and unrealized.

But every dream must

pass through the night

before it reaches paradise.

Christ told the thief, “Today,

you will be with me in Paradise.”

And so he was, but not until

death, and death is the

enemy of this place.

So we will die, but until then

we are all stranded

in skin and bones.

There is no way

out of this body.

No holes of escape.

No lagoons of nirvana.

No route for the blood

but round and round.

Sure, we can bleed.

We can bleed until death.

Then the soul will go

somewhere. But who wants to bleed?

Who knows where the soul really goes?

I'm a seeker of grace,

knowing grace will rescue me

from this bag of skin and bones.

If I fall, if I break apart

the everlasting arms

are beneath me.

Deuteronomy 33

²⁷ The eternal God is your refuge,
       and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Empty

Bono was no longer

inside the house,

but his food bowl

was in the kitchen,

the blue sleeping bag

in the corner

where he slept.

 

I put his leash and collar

on the back porch.

He would never meet us

at the backdoor again.

 

Jill fell upon the bed—crying,

and I did my best to hold her,

to be more than a hard-ankle man,

that would say, “Suck it up.

It was only a dog.”

So I held her, and then said,

“Come on, let’s not do this.

Let’s go get a puppy.”

So I called the breeder after she agreed,

and told him we were

coming from Alabama,

that' we’d be leaving

in twenty minutes

to make the three hour trip.

It was 4 pm.

 

We climbed a mountain

in my Ford truck.

We called to let him know

that we were minutes away.

But, after making a wrong turn,

we found ourselves up

a mountain on a narrow road

that made Jill uneasy.

She’s afraid of heights.

She grabbed my leg,

pleading that I turnaround.

“You will go off the side of this mountain.

And no one will ever find us.

Our kids don’t even know we’re doing this.

Please, turnaround.”

I did.

She let go of my leg.

She put her hand to her chest.

Breathed.

 

We found the split-rail fence.

The plow was sitting there too.

Just as he said.

We turned down the long gravel driveway.

The truck shifted its weight

as we climbed along

through the potholes,

and the stars were crazy bright.

Lights doing mad dashes across

the face of nocturnal sleep.

We were in

the mountains of Tennessee.

We could breathe.

 

At the edge of the woods,

we could see a dim window,

the shape of a cabin.

“I hope this is it.”

Before His Body Was Frozen

Before his body was frozen

in the vet’s freezer,

before they crammed him in a box

labeled, “Bono,” we were on our way

to Pikeville, Tennessee,

a little mountain town on

the other side of Chattanooga.

The ad on a website had snapshots,

too vague to see and the puppies

were too bunched up to tell them apart,

so we asked for more pictures, for the number

of males, only to receive a phone call from

the breeder who said,

“I’m new at this emailing pictures thing.”

But soon he succeeded. He made

it work. And all of this happened

before Bono died. We knew it

was coming, knew in our hearts

that we were sitting in the

backyard with Bono for the last time.

He had developed tumors

on his side, on his feet, on his back,

now one beneath his front leg,

so we knew the vet would give us

bad news at a scheduled appointment

later that day. My wife made the appointment

a couple of weeks prior, knowing

things were getting bad.

Bono was resting in the backyard

for the last time.

I knew my wife would mourn,

that she’d cry and hang her harp

in a tree by the Jordan, that she’d

miss her walking buddy

who pulled her around the neighborhood

with a slap-happy smile on his face,

tongue swinging within jaws, but that

had all ended a couple of weeks back.

He’d developed a limp

and hobbled down steps,

unable to get back up without

struggling when he lay down.

So I felt guilty for talking

about puppies in front of him

before the visit to the vet,

but I knew my wife would need a new one,

to get over Bono, and sometimes

the best thing to do is move on.

Bono was the kind of dog that

would want you to move on

and keep the boxer tradition

going in our family. He was

the third after Spike and Rommel.

Spike met a car and

Rommel went to live on a farm

after we moved to the city, but

for nine years Bono had been

with us and had become like

furniture that leaves an empty place

when taken, and we cried

at the vet, and I tried to hide my face

when tears rushed into the moment.

My wife was the first, and when she told him,

“You were such a good boy,”

that was all it took for me

to breakdown too.

After we said good-bye

and after the vet gave him morphine

to calm him down, we kissed him

and turned to leave, and by this time

he was resting on the metal-top table, so

we felt it would be best to sneak away—

out into the daylight with his collar

and leash in hand, while

darkness held him there. But when

the door opened, I heard him

stand.

Here

There