Encounter With a Dog

I went to visit my friend up the road. She was busy in her kitchen, cutting up an enormous pumpkin for cooking and freezing - good for soups and pies later on. She lives with her daughter, recently back from living way up north, now a school teacher at the local elementary school. They keep each other company through these long nights. My friend has a dog named Lucky, a big outdoorsy type with thick fur and a large, intelligent head. Her daughter chose to get herself a puppy - a dog of indeterminate breed and sunny disposition. Ruffles is his improbable name. He's grown fast over the past few months. At seven months he is now a big dog, slender and athletic, with a soft face, floppy ears and a long tail that sweeps to the floor anything placed at coffee table height. 

I do love dogs. They are so perfectly able to show us what it means to live in the Now.

I was sitting in the kitchen on a straight-backed chair and Ruffles came in to greet me. Oh! What a greeting it was! You'd have thought we'd known each other well for years, though I've barely touched him in his short life. He was all laughing face and sweeping tail, puppy paws and joy. Such joy! Just to be. Just to be in that moment greeting Lu in her chair. I gave him the full treatment - hands sweeping lightly across face and ears, then pulling gently at the rough fur 'round his neck, quieting and reassuring him.

It is a delight to be in the moment with a dog.

This particular dog tilted his head back so that I could get under his chin and looked up at me with big brown puppy eyes filled with love. His whole body expressed joy in the moment. His eyes shone with such an expression of love that I can still feel it warm me. It was a powerful thing, yet there was no mind in it, no will, no consciousness of separation or of self. Just love was there - pure and filled with joy in the moment and shining out of those eyes and into my heart. Wonderful!

Imagine if we could be so filled with pure love. Imagine if we could express such love to each other, radiate such a love into the world. What a wonder it would be! And this I know to be true: It would change the world. Such a love given so openly by us would change the world in ways so deep and fundamental that we cannot even begin to measure them.

I imagine radiating love as that puppy did, sending it out unconditionally and with complete joy in the moment, never minding at all what is done with my offering, but shining it out from my core because that is what I AM.

Most of the time, we hide our love from each other. I have been deeply blessed by friendships that allow me, sometimes, to express my love openly. I enjoy those moments very much! Yet it seems rather a waste, doesn't it? Not to feel allowed to be so openly loving, so unconditionally and radiantly loving. Dogs get away with it because .... well, they're dogs. Let's pretend that we are allowed to get away with it too. Let's pretend that we can wear doggie smiles and wag imaginary tails and shine love out of our eyes the way our doggie friends shine love out of theirs.

I walked yesterday with that same friend, through the forest along the path that winds from my mailbox to my house. I said aloud, "I love the forest! I love to be in the woods!" and she echoed my sentiment with as much joy sounding in her breath and voice as had been expressed in my own. "I love the woods!"

I love....

I love....

I love....