"What if I was in Sophie's body and Sophie was in my body?"
Sophie is our big, goofy dog. I am not a dog person. I did not particularly want a dog, but my family wore me down and I'll admit, she's a very good girl. Like all dogs, she loves treats, gets very excited about going for walks, snarfs up any crumb that falls on the floor, goes nuts for a squeaky toy and licks her butt. She was doing this last one as I was asked the question above by my six-year-old.
I said, because what six-year-old doesn't like to talk about butts, "Do you think you would lick your butt like Sophie does?"
"What? No!"
"Would you wait at my feet while I'm cooking, just in case I drop something?"
That one he thought about a little more. I started laughing, thinking of how silly it would be if my child acted like a dog and if Sophie started acting like a human child. Together we giggled as we thought of the different scenarios and ways that it would be funny and ridiculous to experience a human/dog body swap.
Even in the best of times, I have a personality that tends more toward curmudgeonliness than the whimsy. I lean more toward critique than appreciation. More staid than silly. Even more so than usual, in the interminable days of the pandemic, I find myself struggling to engage in delight and gratitude and affirmation.
To fend off the panic and sorrow, I turn the radio off when another doom-laden news item is being reported on. I try and sometimes succeed in not being entirely critical and demanding with my children and spouse. I use screens for escape. I get outside. Still, I haven't found anything that truly feeds and nurtures a sense of joy that is hard for me to come by at the best of times.
So I was surprised to find myself not only enjoying the ridiculousness of our little flight of imagination but returning to that moment in my mind all the next day. That moment - and it truly was only a short interaction - got me thinking about how I can seize moments of joy when the Spirit presents me the opening. I could have said, "Oh, you're so silly, Dogs can't be people." and that would have been that.
I did have that inclination a day or so later when I was asked, "What would you wish for if you could wish for anything." Just at that moment, the conflict in the Ukraine was being reported and true to form, my first thought was, How can I choose between world peace and the end to the climate crisis and for the pandemic to be over and, and, and... So I said something boring and dumb like, that all people would care about each other and the earth.
But then I backtracked. I said, "But really, if it's just for myself, I wish for a swimming pool."
"Where would we put a swimming pool?"
"How about on the roof?"
And again, we were off. Imagining how we'd get to a pool on the roof, deciding that actually a hot tub would be better in this weather, that definitely we'd some very good floaty toys.
"God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit." These moments when I let myself seize the tiny moments of joy were a gift of that same Spirit - blowing in unexpectedly.
I pray that you all may also find and seize the joy that the Spirit want to offer you
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Photo by Dominika Roseclay from Pexels
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