Introducing Myrrhlyn

Drum roll please!

Myrrhlyn came to live with us Thursday. He was being sheltered under the name “Dusty” at Wilma’s Orphan’s Inc. “Dusty” was also Hermes’ name when we adopted him and Wilma was my mother’s name. More synchronicity?

We went to visit Wilma and Dusty a week ago. After our visit Wilma processed our application, contacted our references, and approved us adopting Dusty.

Wilma delivered this cute bundle of canine energy Thursday morning. The photo of Myrrhlyn at right is not the best picture but it is the first, taken as he was approaching our home.

We had been thinking about names and had narrowed the choices down to three or four but decided to wait twenty-four hours after Myrrhlyn came to live with us before finally deciding. He have chosen a Welsh variation of the name of the magician, seer, and teacher of Arthurian Legend, a variation which also alludes to one of the gifts of the Magi to the Christ Child, a gift often used for the embalming, funeral incense, and Christian liturgy. The Welsh variation also recognizes our love of Celtic tradition and lore as well as interest in Celtic Christianity.

Myrrhlyn has been with us for nearly 48 hours. He is affectionate, intelligent, has a lot of puppy energy, and has had very few “accidents” in the house. His vet records estimate that he was born March 24, 2009. He appears to be a Chocolate Lab but is certainly a Labrador Retriever Mix.

Crossing the Last Crevasse

Over two weeks have passed since our dog Hermes (photo right) died. Though I have previously posted to this blog about his death I have procrastinated writing a suitable tribute. Perhaps I have been hoping that as more time elapsed between his death and my writing this tribute that the interim would either offer me more perspective or lesson the grief, or both. Now I am confronted with the likelihood that a puppy will be coming into our home within days. While no dog can ever replace Hermes, I think I need to cathartically write now rather than later in order to make some psychic space for the fourth dog in our life.

Hermes was rescued along with another dog from under the porch of an abandoned house during a snowstorm by Andrea in January 2005. Even though Andrea and her soccer coach husband Matt already had two small children and two dogs, they took Hermes in, and called him Dusty. Andrea and Matt took Dusty to a vet for his shots, hoping to find him another home.

A few months later a few young women from the soccer team at the college where my wife served as Chaplain brought Dusty to a Blessing of the Animals Chapel Service. Dusty and my wife almost immediately connected. He came to our home shortly after for a trial visit. By the next morning I had renamed him Hermes, after the talking dog Character in Jostein Gaarder’s #1 international bestseller Sophie’s World. I was teaching undergraduate Introduction to Philosophy at the time as adjunct faculty and had been using Sophie’s World as the primary text. The rest, as they say, is history.

Hermes was not a good dog. HE WAS A GREAT DOG. Our Hermes never talked to me in this life, except with his love, companionship, loyalty, protectiveness, and barks, but it seemed that his vocabulary of words he could understand when we spoke was constantly increasing. He was fiercely loyal and protective. He was a good, well behaved puppy and a great companion on a lot of hikes in West Virginia’s Otter Creek and Dolly Sods wilderness area as well as New York’s Shawangunk range. He went backpacking with me at least twice, and car camped with us at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore campground on Ocracoke Island, NC.

It is said that tragedy and bad news comes in threes. Not long before Hermes died our good friend Whitney’s dog Ellie died. Elle and Hermes were doggy friends. A couple nights before Hermes died, Ellen’s dog Nina died. Ellen is a member of the church I serve and her dog Nina would often come with her to church events, so in many ways Nina was a canine friend of the congregation. Hermes death was the third death of a dog we knew in the period of just a few weeks.

I do not at all believe in superstition but as an amateur Jungian I do place some credence in synchronicity. While Hermes’ death being the third death of a canine we knew in a matter of weeks might be counted as coincidence, I cannot count as mere coincidence the fact that Hermes died two years to the day after he moved to New York City. Nor can I ignore the fact that the day after he died a thief stole a statue of Saint Francis (far right in photo at right), patron saint of animals, from off our front stoop. What I am supposed to learn from all this has yet to be discerned. Meanwhile, my wife and I still have not made any decisions about where to scatter Hermes ashes. There is still time for that.

In preparation for writing this post I have read, for at least the third or fourth time in the past thirty five years, John Muir’s classic short story and tribute to a dog named Stickeen, a dog that travelled an Alaskan glacier with Muir in 1880. Unlike Stickeen, Hermes never crossed a narrow ice bridge over a glacier’s crevasse. Hermes did, however, cross streams by walking and swimming, scramble up rocky slopes, and sit out thunder storms with me as together we hiked and backpacked. Thus, in the spirit of Muir and borrowing Muir’s words about Stickeen, I fondly and teary eyed write about and in tribute to Hermes “Doubtless he has left this world—crossed the last crevasse—and gone to another. But he will not be forgotten. To me [Hermes] is immortal.”

Shadows Outside the Cave

Not long ago during a sunny afternoon following a week of rain and overcast skies, I noticed a compelling shadow on a wall in our living room. Recognizing the outline I knew at once what the shadow was of. The shadow on the wall was of a mermaid sculpture sitting near the window where rays of the Sun were shining in. I would not have been able to deduce the form casting the shadow if I had not first known the Sculpture. Because I knew the three dimensional sculpture I recognized its outline in the two dimensional shadow. I knew the shadow was not the sculpture because I also knew the sculpture casting the shadow. I was compelled to capture both the shadow and the sculpture with my digital camera.

A few days later I was walking along the sidewalk on another rare bight sunny day. I noticed my shadow ahead of me on the sidewalk. Since I had my camera with me I took a picture, not quite a self portrait, but close.

A week or so later I was standing in the foyer of North Church Queens, waiting for worship to begin, when I looked out the window and noticed on the street in front of the church the shadow of a very recognizable form. It was the form of a Celtic Cross, but not any Celtic Cross. It was the shadow of the Celtic Cross on the roof of the church.

I have learned over the years that when I am aware of similar phenomena occurring in threes or more within close proximity of time to pay attention to them. Jung called such occurrences synchronicity, and through his writings he taught me that when I am aware of occurrences of synchronicity that I had not only better pay attention but also reflect upon the experience. Thus, I write this post.

Hopefully everyone who has ever had a high school or college level Introduction to Philosophy Class will be familiar with Plato’s Analogy of the Cave. I know the students I had for Introduction to Philosophy at the undergraduate level were presented with it.

I think we very often are willing to settle for and live with shadows when upon a little reflection and inquiry we can discover the three dimensional reality behind them. We rarely expend the time or energy to ask questions about our world, to go below the surface and delve deeper into reality. After awhile our own existence can take on a shadow quality and so we live shallow, superficial, two dimensional lives.

Synchronicity

Less than twenty-four hours after I stated blogging, the January/February 2009 issue of Presbyterians Today arrived in the mail. It contained a short article by Jody Harrington entitled “Best of the blogs: Blogging 101.” Jody is an elder at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, and past moderator of New Covenant presbytery. She writes the blog Quotidian Grace . That same day, Psalms Modern, a blog of Presbyterian Welcome, published a meditation I had earlier submitted to them. Was this a mere coincidence?

My interest in blogging, dare I say even my familiarity with it, was sparked by an article in the November 3, 2008 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook. The article quoted blogger Shawn Coons but did not give the name or location of his blog. I wanted to engage Shawn in a conversation so I initiated a search of the internet and discovered Shawn Coons Newish Blog. His links directed me to more blogs, which I also perused. I had entered the world of blogging for the first time and without realizing it apparently had become hooked.

Not long after first discovering the world of blogging the December 2, 2008 issue of The Christian Century arrived. The back cover featured information about the online magazine christiancentury.org, the blog of the Christian Century at theolog.org, and Century community of bloggers at ccblogs.org. I looked at some of the blogs at ccblogs.org and was impressed.

I sent an email to CC requesting more details about CC hosting my blog and hosting a domain name at no cost. CC responded that there had been a slight change to policy regarding hosting and domains, that CC would do this but only for established bloggers. CC suggested I start a blog at blogger or wordpress or anywhere, blog for a time, and get back to them.

After looking at both blogger and wordpress I chose blogger because it was free and I already had a Google account. I started my blog Monday evening, January 5, 2009. The following day’s mail delivery included the most recent issue of Presbyterians Today which ran the article about blogging. That same day Psalms Modern, a blog of Presbyterian Welcome, published a meditation I had earlier submitted to them.

The article in PT is the first in an ongoing column promising to “highlight blogs of particular interest to readers of Presbyterian Today.” This leaves me wondering if my blog will earn being mentioned. Maybe grace will prevail and it will be mentioned even if it does not deserve to be.

Was it coincidence that within the time frame of a month I read about and discovered Shawn Coons Newish Blog, started reading other blogs, saw the back cover of CC about blogs, started my own blog, received the most recent issue of PT with the first article in a new column about blogging, and had a meditation published on another blog?

Generally speaking, I am a Jungian. I am also an Intuitive on the MBTI. I see connections others do not normally see and invent them were there are none. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes, well. There are coincidences and there are coincidences. When the same word, symbol, sign, emotion, or thought seems to be manifesting itself in numerous and generally unrelated events and mediums, pay attention! You might end up starting a blog.