Stewarding the expectant stare of the creatures—attempts at Adam-ing!

  Psalm 123. I know some people don’t meet God through animal care, or nature or haven’t caught His heart for the earth and creation, but it’s the same lessons of life in whatever medium you learn through.

 This dog (Jakob, my Jewish dog with a built in Yarmulke) gets that psalm. How we are meant to look towards God the way a dog does to his master-in total hope and expectancy, faith, or higher trust, for everything! I’m slightly altering the metaphors of that psalm, but the sentiment is the same. Earnest expectation of the best from your Master. I learn so much from my creatures.

 Of course, it also challenges me to be a somewhat decent and present father, considering his needs above my own. When a creature is that reliant and looking in hope at you, it makes you want to show up as your best self.

 The psalmist is expressing something a bit higher- to lift up our eyes to Him who is enthroned in Heaven as your hope and provider, but creatures echo that pattern daily, and we learn it all through daily life. This way of looking, puts us in a position to receive what we really need!

 We all look to a Higher to help us out, even just for food, water, air, and we have to trust it to come through daily, in order to live.

 Creatures look to us for safety, food, enjoyment, and it requires us to consider their actual unique needs in their creature-ness, which is also to consider who or what they were created to be, which is a mediation on God’s creativity outside of us.

 Of course, there needs may be simpler than ours (sometimes i wonder, as this dog has about a 43 word vocabulary and can distinguish between a scarf and a hat-in english and Spanish, as i try to speak to him in both, and some hebrew of course!), but just as our basic needs and orientation towards the Universe—trust in love is involved!

 And we can’t just project our needs on them, or expect them to parent us, as happens in some families unfortunately—parental inversion, i think it’s called in counseling.

No, turns out the creatures beneath us have their own needs, and position themselves in a way which calls us forth into parenthood!

 Anyway, animals are cool when you really engage with them, as God’s poetry, and our responsibility to steward and guide well.

 Thankful today for this expectantly hopeful dog. His hope in the best of me, helped me to be a better person today. More sacrificial. I enjoyed stewarding the hopeful stare of my dog today!

  Like Adam, who got to name some of the animals, or discover their names (identities) together with God, we still have this responsibility to recognize their identities and steward the little passing but somehow eternal poetry of being, they each are. Fun stewarding the creatures once it becomes part of your spirituality.