Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

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Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Dreaming of something beyond ourselves

 

 

 

In the middle of the night, a sudden bark snapped me out of sleep. Our dog Phoebe lurched to her feet, prepared to defend us from, well, she wasn’t quite sure what. She looked around, a little bewildered, and then settled back onto her bed with a wheeze and a sigh.

            Dogs dream.

            That should be an obvious statement. All dog owners have seen their pet’s legs twitching while asleep. Clearly, the dog is chasing something. A rabbit perhaps. Or romping for sheer joy through an imaginary meadow.

            We cannot know exactly what the dream consists of, because dogs can’t talk to us. But the fact that dogs can dream should tell us that dogs are capable of imagining themselves in situations that transcend the immediate present.

            That is, they are not simply creatures that react to external stimuli.

            When a doctor whacks your knee with a rubber hammer, your leg jerks involuntarily. That’s reacting to an external stimulus. Even an amoeba, the simplest of individual cells, will pull back from a painful contact. Merely reacting requires no consciousness at all.

 

Imagining ourselves

            There is a tendency, I find, to treat animals as non-thinking creatures. To assume, for example, that cows have nothing going through their minds as they stand in a field re-chewing yesterday’s cud.

            Perhaps we don’t want them to have minds at all, because then we’d have to admit that cows can anticipate fear when they’re herded towards the slaughterhouse. Or that chickens feel discomfort confined to tiny laying cells.

            But if a dog can dream, that means it can recognize itself as something other than what it is at that moment. Nothing outside its own mind causes it to bark. Within its mind, it is running even when it is not.

            Are dogs conscious of life and death?

            In my own dreams, I am never an 80-year-old man, growing increasingly frail. I’m a younger man – often bewildered by Kafka-esque experiences – but still clearly me. I have a picture of myself different from present reality.

            In the same way, a grizzled old dog won’t attempt to chase a rabbit in real life. When it starts running furiously in its sleep, is it imagining itself as it once was?

 

Gateway to the beyond

            The ability to think of ourselves as distinct from the physical forces that impinge on us is a remarkable achievement. We recognize ourselves as more than ping pong balls slapped around by invisible paddles.

            If we can do that, we can also begin to imagine the paddles -- the forces beyond us, that affect us. Once we can think beyond “me,” we can start to think of “thee.”

We humans tend to give those forces a name -- “fate.” Or “government.” Or even “God.”

            When I read the Bible, I’m surprised how often the recognition of a transcending presence comes through dreams. Jacob dreamed of a ladder to heaven, and of wrestling with an angel. Solomon asked for wisdom in a dream. Ezekiel visualized a valley of dry bones. Mary and Joseph received reassurance about her pregnancy in dreams.

            They were all able to see themselves beyond knee-jerk reactions.

            If dogs can do that too, might they also have an awareness of God? (Although they would probably spell it Dog.)

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

 

I got lots of mail about the column on grammatical rules that aren’t. Not all of it was favourable.

            Peter Scott called last week’s column, “just possibly the most depressing column you've ever written. Are you saying that all those spelling, grammatical and stylistic rules I learned in school are useless? I don't think so.

            “Those rules provided a framework toward which to strive, and I am grateful to have had them. Not that I never broke them, but when I did, I did it knowingly for greater impact or effect -- as I'm sure you did too. Of course those rules were meant to be broken at times but a world with no grammatical or spelling rules is no fun at all.  It's like… what we now have on the internet where everyone is an authority on everything. Many schools in Ontario don't even bother to teach spelling and grammar now and I think our world is poorer for it. I guess it's a good thing that I'll be joining the dinosaurs soon.

            “By the way, I still drive a vehicle with a clutch because when driven properly it uses less fuel than an automatic transmission which makes all the shifting decisions for you. I guess it's a bit like knowing how and when to use grammatical and spelling rules. In my lifetime the world has moved steadily away from expecting people to know how to do things for themselves and toward having a machine (transmission or computer) make our decisions for us. I think maybe the pendulum has swung too far.”

 

Miryam Hammond also reacted to left-foot braking: “Great column today, with one exception. Using the left foot on the brake leads many people to ‘ride’ their brake, which I've ‘always been taught’ is bad for the brakes.”

 

Cliff Boldt noted that “There is unspoken comfort in a rule, not unlike the comfort of a blanket that covers me when I sit in my La-z-boy and read or snooze.”

            Similarly, Charles Hill commented that rules are sometimes governed by “emotional needs.”

 

More lightly, Ted Spencer sighed, “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy… One deft poke with your editorish opinion and poof! There goes my self-appointed job as the neighbourhood pedantic twit. All those folk who were terrified to open their gops in The Presence will be blowing raspberries my way. And giving me a double dose of ‘like’ and ‘you know’ and start every sentence with two copies of ‘so’. Totally.”

            Perhaps intentionally, Ted then ended a sentence with a preposition: “An unfortunate turn of circumstance to start the year on.”

 

Tom Watson agreed “that it's difficult to un-learn something we were once taught, even if it's important to do so. A caveat, however, is that there are things people were once taught but have now, seemingly, been discarded with abandon. For example, I was taught always to put the other person first in the construction of a sentence: ‘Herkimer and I went to the store.’ It grates to hear ‘Me and Herkimer went to the store’ and I hear that all too frequently. I find myself correcting my grandchildren on this point.

            “That leads me to ask: Are students no longer being taught this grammatical structure...and others as well...or has the common cultural usage done in the very best of educational efforts?”

 

On the same point, Mary Collins wrote, “I too was taught not to begin a sentence with ‘I’ -- rather, with the other person. These days people often do put the other person first, but with totally incorrect grammar:  "Me and Gloria are going swimming…” "Her and I are good friends…" "Him and I are...". Where on earth did this come from? (I've been overseas too long!) I realize language changes and we must be open to that, but please not to such glaringly incorrect grammar. I have to bite my tongue every time I hear it, wanting to correct the person. I can endure all sorts of other bad grammar, but not the above!”

 

And Robert Caughell wrote, “I can relate to this. Spent five years in high school taking English grammar and sentence structure courses. But it seems wrong [awkward? JT] not to start sentences/paragraphs with ‘I’. Maybe we should all talk like Yoda from Star Wars? It sounds strange to begin with but after that it seems a natural way to talk.”

            Jim explains: The rule about “I” goes back to a time when writers were encouraged to identify themselves in the third person: “The writer observed….” “One must conclude….” Throwing in first-person pronouns was considered egotistical.

 

Alex McGilvery offered an editor’s viewpoint: “I like your comments on rules. We need to be aware of both tacit and explicit rules in order to change them. As an editor, I tell my clients the only true rule in writing is ‘Does it work?’ If the answer is yes, you're good; if no, back to the revisions. I'm amazed at how many people hire me based only on that statement.

 

Isabel Gibson commented on why the best writers break rules: “In Spanish, one can speak a language or dominate it, the latter denoting a higher order of proficiency. Never-Never rules often go Bye-Bye under conditions of dominance. In English, I know when and how to break any standard rules, and so I do, in speaking and in writing.

            “Maybe lack of proficiency is part of our problem with giving up absolute rules we've learned in any field. The more we learn, the more we're willing to unlearn, as well.”

 

Steve Roney challenged one of my instances. I had written: “When asked to imagine in a God who doesn’t meddle in natural events, who doesn’t deliver red wagons and zap tumours, the inevitable response comes, ‘But I was always taught…’

            Steve countered, “Surely that is Deism. It is fundamental to the Jewish and Christian concept of God that he does indeed intervene in history. That is the whole point, for example, of the incarnation. One cannot accept your assertion here without chucking out both Jesus and the Bible.”

 

Jean Hamilton corrected the quotation attributed to Winston Churchill. The correct form, she said, is "That is a type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

            I found half a dozen variants on the Internet, all claiming to be authoritative. Following the principles of biblical scholarship, I chose the one that seemed least likely to have been sanitized.

 

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

 

For this fourth Sunday of Epiphany, Vanderbilt Divinity School specifies Psalm 15. It’s short and to the point.

 

1 Who are your friends, God? Who is welcome in your presence?

2 Those who can hold their heads high, who have good motives, who have no hidden agendas. 

3 They do not delight in malicious gossip;
They do not delight in someone else's problems;
They do not hold grudges.

4 They do not seek the patronage of the powerful, nor the friendship of the foul in spirit;
But they respect those who love God, who are prepared to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of others.

5 They put their wealth to worthwhile use;
They will not exploit those who cannot protect themselves.
Those who live by these principles are always be welcome in the company of the holy. 

 

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

 

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…

        Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

        Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

        Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

        Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

        Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

 

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TECHNICAL STUFF

 

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

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            My webpage is up and running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and about five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

            I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

 

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Author: Jim Taylor

Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: dogs, dreaming, transcendence

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