Baptism: Learning from the Royal Christening

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One of the lovely and important aspects of the establishment of the Church of England is that the sacraments of the Church (marriage and baptism) can become teaching moments for a whole nation. We will be baptizing two babies at Grace on All Saints’ Sunday (November 3) and I was talking yesterday evening with one set of parents, I mentioned today’s baptism. I’m sharing these links because they help us reflect on what baptism means for us, and especially what it means in an increasingly secular society.

The Church of England created a lovely and thoughtful video in which the Archbishop articulates the meaning of the rite:

Cathleen Grossman writes about the decline in numbers of baptism across the US. The numbers of baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention fell to about the same number as in 1948, when the total membership of the denomination was less than half what it is today. In 1970, about 20% of the babies born in the United States were baptized Roman Catholic; today, that has fallen to 8%.

The Guardian notes that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have selected seven of their friends to be Prince George’s godparents and have solicited stories from readers about what their experiences of the relationship.

And from the Church of England, prayers for the Royal Christening (actually, prayers for all baptisms):

Prayer for HRH Prince George

We thank almighty God for the gift of new life.
May God the Father, who has received you by baptism into his Church,
pour upon you the riches of his grace,
that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people
you may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit,
and come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.
Amen.

 

Prayer for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Faithful and loving God,
bless those who care for this child
and grant them your gifts of love, wisdom and faith.
Pour upon them your healing and reconciling love,
and protect their home from all evil.
Fill them with the light of your presence
and establish them in the joy of your kingdom,
through Jesus Christ our Lord
Amen.

A lengthy piece on homelessness in New York City

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Written by Ian Frazier, it provides some interesting comparisons to our own situation here in Madison:

In fact, during the twelve years of the Bloomberg administration, the number of homeless people has gone through the roof they do not have. There are now two hundred and thirty-six homeless shelters in the city. Imagine Yankee Stadium almost four-fifths full of homeless families; about eighteen thousand adults in families in New York City were homeless as of January, 2013, and more than twenty-one thousand children. The C.F.H. says that during Bloomberg’s twelve years the number of homeless families went up by seventy-three per cent. One child out of every hundred children in the city is homeless.

Wrestling with God: A Sermon for Proper 24, Year C

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Reading the story of Jacob in Genesis always puts me in mind of what was easily among the most memorable incidents of my teaching career. I was grading midterm exams one year and the pile I was reading was just as unremarkable as every other pile of midterm exams I read over the years—I taught Intro to the Bible about twenty times. Unremarkable, that is, until I came across the essay that began with the following sentence: “Jacob was a good Christian Man.” I don’t remember how I responded—perhaps I banged my head on the desk in utter frustration; perhaps I yelled. Continue reading →

Let light perpetual shine upon him

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We said good bye to Thomas Merton this afternoon. It was a difficult decision but the correct one. For the last several days, he had been eating less and less. It was obvious that it was hard for him to chew and swallow, and especially sad when he came downstairs and banged his dish around the kitchen to try to wake us up or get our attention. That was something he learned early on and was a very effective method to get humans to respond to his needs. Unfortunately, last night and this morning when we tried to give him something after he had banged for our attention, he refused pretty much everything we offered.

A visit to the vet this morning confirmed that the tumor had grown considerably. In addition to making eating difficult, it’s likely Merton was in considerable pain because the cancer had entered the bone. But there was little sign of suffering. He was still jumping around,watching chipmunks and squirrels from our back porch, and even playing ball–catching it with his feet and batting it around.

So the vet and a vet tech (who had stayed with our cats in the past) came by the house this afternoon and ended his suffering. He died on my lap.

I’ve written about Merton’s final journey here and here. He’s been a good friend for almost fourteen and an amazing cat. He was very smart, very stubborn, and regal. We will miss him keenly.

Again, my favorite photo of him, relaxing with Augustine’s City of God:

162829_1565031438172_3235424_nThanks again to Dr. Tom Bach and all the good folk of Lakeview Veterinary Clinic.

Let us give thanks and praise: A Sermon for Proper 23, Year C

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On Friday evening, about 100 of us gathered at the Goodman Center to celebrate the more than thirty years Grace’s Food Pantry has been in operation, to thank those whose vision brought it into existence, and the many volunteers and donors who have given so much of their time, skills, and financial resources to help the pantry provide food for food-insecure families.

We also learned some sobering information about the need in our community. I’ll just throw out a couple of statistics: 48% of the children in Madison schools are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. The number of visits to food pantries in Dane County almost doubled between 2007 and 2012.  And it’s estimated that about 20% of all families are food insecure, that is to say, they aren’t sure whether they will have enough food to survive til their next paycheck.

We live in a society that is increasingly divided between have and have not; but it’s not just that. The problem is that the gap between the haves and have nots is growing wider day by day, and the number of those who are falling out of the middle class into poverty continues to grow.

Those are the statistics, but what I’m worried about is the effects of a government shutdown on the neediest in our society. Already we’re seeing that in many states, the WIC program, which provides food for pregnant mothers, and infant formula, is shut down. In some states, the supplemental food program, SNAP, what is often called food stamps, is already stopped, and if the shutdown continues, it will end everywhere. And the commodity programs, TEFAP, which provides free food to organizations like our food pantry, has enough food to last the month, but no more.

All of this is frankly, frightening. Whether our dysfunctional political system can come together long enough to avert even greater catastrophe is not at all clear. And even if it does, it’s likely that the most vulnerable in our society, children, mothers, the elderly, poor, and disabled will continue to be demonized by a culture that values only wealth, success, and celebrity.

By now, some of you may be thinking this sermon is veering into a political screed but I want to remind you that the Jesus we follow, the Jesus we encounter in the Gospel, is someone who ministered to and among the neediest members of Palestinian society. His first sermon in Nazareth proclaimed his mission statement: “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

As we have read the gospel of Luke, we have seen him do those things: offer hope to the hopeless, food to the hungry, heal the blind and the deaf, raise the dead. But it’s not just Jesus. When he sent out the seventy, when he commissioned his disciples, he sent them to extend his ministry, mission, the good news of God’s reign into the wider world.

In today’s gospel reading, he does it again. On the surface, it’s rather a simple story. Jesus cleanses ten lepers; he tells them to go to the priests to be certified as clean, and then to go back home. Only one of them returns to thank him, and it turns out to be a Samaritan who responds to Jesus’ acts with gratitude. On the surface, this story seems to be about etiquette, about giving thanks.

As an aside, let me offer a brief comment about leprosy. In the biblical tradition, leprosy seems to have been a number of possible skin conditions, even something as simple as psoriasis. And the biblical injunctions were not about keeping physical infection away; rather they were about purity and cleanliness. That’s made clear by what is a very curious element in the discussion of leprous diseases in Leviticus. You were only unclean if the condition was partial, that is to say, you were unclean if you had spots of the disease on your body. If it made you white from head to toe, the priest would certify you clean.

The important thing about leprosy is that it excluded you from the community. Leviticus dictates that a person with leprosy must live alone, away from human habitation, that lepers were to wear torn clothes and cry out “Unclean, unclean,” when anyone approached.

Jesus heals the ten lepers and then instructs them to go to the priests to be certified clean. This is was in perfect keeping with Jewish law as laid out in Leviticus. Nine obeyed him; one did not. The tenth came back, praising God with a loud voice, and thanking Jesus. Luke adds, as if in a marginal comment, “And he was a Samaritan.”

This story is not primarily about etiquette. It is about religious norms and values. The Samaritan was doubly unclean in the eyes of Jews. As a leper, he would have been excluded from the community, shunned. As a Samaritan, he would have been reviled for the religious traditions he followed. What is puzzling is that his being a Samaritan takes on significance only after his leprosy is cleansed. Jesus told all ten to present themselves to the priests, what the law required. But of course, as a Samaritan, he would not have had that option, or indeed, it would not have been necessary. No certificate from any priest deeming him free of leprosy would make him a part of the Jewish community. Perhaps that is why he came back to Jesus. He realized he had been cleansed, and that was all that mattered.

By contrast, the other nine needed the priests’ certification of being leprosy-free before they could rejoin their community and assume a role in the religious life of Judaism. There was more at stake for them. Still, whatever their motives, whatever Luke’s motives for telling the story in this way, what intrigues me here is what Jesus says in response to the actions of the Samaritan.

The nine lepers did nothing wrong. They cried out to Jesus, asking, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!” Luke is careful to point out that they did not transgress any boundaries. They stayed as far away from Jesus as they could; they respected the boundaries set up in the law. When Jesus told them to go and present themselves to the priests, they obeyed without question. They followed the rules, and no doubt, they were quite happy that they were cleansed.

The Samaritan turned back, he glorified God, fell on his knees and thanked Jesus. We might think such a response would be natural, but isn’t it the case that most of us would follow the rules laid out? We would do whatever it took to be restored to our families, our livelihoods, and our religious lives? It was only the Samaritan who responded differently. He acted as unexpectedly and extravagantly as Jesus himself did. He came back; and because of his response, he was rewarded extravagantly. The NRSV , “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” In fact, a better translation would read, “your faith has saved you.”

It’s the not just that the Samaritan was cured of his leprosy. He was saved. He recognized in the healing of his body the gracious power of the one who healed him. He looked beyond himself to Jesus. In so doing, he becomes for Luke a model of faith. The ten lepers had pleaded with Jesus, “Have mercy on us.” But only one, the Samaritan, the outsider, the foreigner, recognized and acknowledged their master, only he came to faith. In fact, only he was truly, completely, transformed by the experience.

When describing the Samaritan’s actions, Luke chooses a very interesting word. eucharistein. It’s translated as giving thanks, and it’s the word from which Eucharist comes. But it’s more than giving thanks—just as we do each Sunday in the Eucharist, it’s also about glorifying and praising God.

Having been cleansed of his leprosy, he had much for which to glorify, praise, and thank God. So do we. The Samaritan came back and thanked Jesus in an act of spontaneous, embarrassing joy. He made a spectacle of himself. It’s a response we should have to the saving love of God in Jesus Christ. That joy should be the heart of our experience of Jesus Christ. That joy should transform us

He gave thanks with all he had, and so should we. We are accustomed to thanking God in word, in prayer, in hymns. Thanking, praising, glorifying God should take place with our whole being as we acknowledge all that God has given us. We can give thanks in word. We can give thanks in our actions as we reach out to help the hungry and the homeless, to do the work necessary to maintain and build up the body of Christ in this place. And we also need to give of our financial resources—so that through Grace Church, its ministries and mission, people can come to wholeness, restored in body and spirit by their encounter with God’s love among us.

We all approach Jesus, begging him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” We all have experienced, or hope to experience, the power of his healing love. Jesus pronounced the words of salvation to the tenth Samaritant, “Your faith has saved you.” May we also experience that wholeness, in body, mind, and spirit, and respond to it from the wholeness of our being, in faith, and gratitude, and generosity. Like the Samaritan, may our joy be embarrassing.

Mark Oppenheimer on John Howard Yoder

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There’s an article in the New York Times about the controversy in Mennonite circles about John Howard Yoder. In a way, it seems like airing dirty laundry but if that’s the case the laundry has been dirty for a very long time. I mention it here for several reasons. First, because it’s another example of the difficulty Christian churches have in dealing with sexual abuse and sexual violence. Second, Yoder is a significant influence in my own theology. He has shaped my understanding of Jesus’ message, nonviolence, and the nature of the church. Yoder is an important witness and his thought has much to offer us as we enter a future where Christianity no longer has power and privilege in the west. Third, the relationship between the life and thought of a theologian raises significant issues. If Yoder acted abominably to women of his acquaintance, what does that say about his theology?

Like most Mennonites of my generation, John Howard Yoder was larger than life. He brought Anabaptist and Mennonite theology and ethics into the mainstream of Protestantism. I read The Politics of Jesus when I was a teenager in the mid-70s. It shaped my understanding of Jesus, my ethical stance, and my theology.

I spent one semester at what was then Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries and made sure that I took the only course Yoder offered that term. His theological brilliance did not extend to the classroom, nor to interpersonal relations and looking back, the course was less than successful. It was on ecumenical reform movements within Christianity and tried to bring together a number of very different movements that emerged in Western Christianity after the Protestant Reformation.

But at AMBS, Yoder was a presence in the classroom even when he wasn’t the instructor. In our Theology class, his “Preface to Theology” was a basic text though it existed only in photocopy. It, too, was an insightful and important work on my journey.

I left Elkhart for Boston after that semester and eventually entered Harvard Divinity School. It was there where I began to discern some of the structural problems in Yoder’s work. Reading Politics of Jesus again in the context of a strong Feminist community opened my eyes to the persistent power dynamics in the work. It’s easy for people (men) of power and privilege to speak of revolutionary subordination, but when people are oppressed and disenfranchised such a call may not be transformative. When people are victims of violence, following “revolutionary subordination” might be fatal.

With strong ties to the Mennonite community and to AMBS, I learned a little a bit at the time about why Yoder suddenly left the seminary in the mid 80s. I continued to engage his contemporary theological work over the years and his historical work on early Anabaptism played a significant role in my own dissertation. I write about the last time I saw him here.

All of these memories came back to me this summer when I learned of the latest, posthumous controversy concerning Yoder’s behavior. There’s been considerable coverage in the Mennonite press and among Mennonite theologians. For those of us who have paid attention to the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church and have observed similar problems in other denominations including the Episcopal Church, Mennonites’ response to Yoder’s behavior is troubling. That they are finally coming to terms with it and re-evaluating how they responded in the 1980s and 1990s is important both to that church and to Yoder’s continuing theological legacy.

 

This essay by Barbara Graber re-started the conversation.

If you’re interested I would recommend Ted Grimsrud’s reflections.

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary has responded. Its President Sara Wenger Shenk has this to say.

Mark Thiessen Nation has written extensively about Yoder’s theology and offers a thoughtful and in-depth essay here.

The Mennonite World Review devoted an entire issue to sexual violence among Mennonites.

 

What’s Up in the Anglican Communion?

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about world-wide Anglicanism and I’m only prompted to do this because several people asked me to lead an Adult Forum on relations between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. So as I prepare for Sunday, I’m writing some of my thoughts down in this blogpost.

Jesse Zink, whose book Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: A Search for Unity will be published in January, 2014, points out the limited perspective of much of the press surrounding the discourse of crisis. He observes that this discourse is driven largely by male English-speaking Bishops who are able to travel from their dioceses to conferences and meetings around the world. Zink himself has spent considerable time in South Sudan and his new book tells stories of deep relationships and close cooperation among Anglicans in specific local contexts.

Just such relationships are being developed between the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Newala in Tanzania. You can read about the recent trip Bishop Miller took with Rev. Paula Harris and Rev. Miranda Hassett via Rev. Miranda’s notes here.

In recent weeks, the Church of Wales, the Church of Ireland, and the Church of South India have all moved towards the consecration of women bishops. This is an issue on which there is disagreement in the worldwide Anglican communion and the Church of England continues to struggle to find a way forward.

However, there are more pressing problems for the Church of England in the decisions of the Church of Wales and Ireland. Priests ordained in those places do not need the formal permission of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to exercise their ministry in England. Kelvin Holdsworth points out that there is no current bishop in the Episcopal Church of Scotland who hasn’t been involved in some way with the consecration of women bishops. Thus, “the theology of taint” which reactionaries worry about has completely infected the Scottish Church, and he wonders whether it is still in “full communion” with the Church of England.

Finally, the conservatives are gathering in Kenya at the end of the month. This conference, called GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) brings together some of the most powerful primates and archbishops from the conservative wing of Anglicanism as well as conservatives from North America and elsewhere across the communion. Many of these same primates have distanced themselves from the “official” instruments of Communion. Some boycotted the Lambeth Conference in 2008 and it was at an earlier conference that an alternative Church in North America (The Anglican Church of North America) had its institutional origins.

Earlier this month, there was talk that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby might attend the conference. He is traveling to Kenya to underscore his solidarity with the victims of the recent terrorist attack. In fact, he will videotape a greeting to the conference. You can read all about it here.

If one reflects on the history of the Anglican Communion, something interesting begins to emerge. It began with a series of ad hoc moves–the Episcopal Church in the US which came into existence because of the Revolutionary War, the Lambeth Conference, et al. There was an effort at building tighter structures in the second half of the twentieth century as part of the larger wave of institution-building. But the Anglican Communion remained rather amorphous, lacking clear lines of authority.

When conflict came in the 1990s, there were efforts to establish the Communion on firmer ground, to centralize it and to vest its central institutions with clear authority. At the same time, conflict caused fissures within and across churches. With the rise of the internet, increased travel, and communication, new relationships could easily be created that circumvented traditional institutions and the “instruments of communion.” There was even an effort to create a parallel body–GAFCON–that might seize from the old Anglican Communion the authority and prestige of being the “true” Anglicans.

Then came social media and other cultural developments.  GAFCON may indeed one day become a parallel body and jurisdiction to the Anglican Communion. But my guess is that informal, lateral relationships will become more important, more powerful, and more life-giving than either hierarchical entity. Relationships like the developing one between the Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Newala and many others across the world will bulid trust, community, and a shared sense of being the Body of Christ that might be able to bridge deep cultural and theological differences. Such relationships and the communion that emerges from them will be more organic and dynamic than the structures that bound the Anglican Communion together in the twentieth century.

Madison, Chicago and homelessness

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On Saturday, I drove down to a Chicago suburb to participate in the ordination of a former staff member to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church USA. At the reception following the service, I had a conversation with a member of that congregation about Madison (he was a UW alum). As we were talking, he mentioned homelessness. I was somewhat surprised that our conversation took that turn.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting at a dinner table in the same suburb, visiting with friends of the newly ordained as well as members of her congregation. Again, the topic of homelessness came up. More specifically, they asked me about the connection between Chicago and Madison.

On Monday, I put it together. Pat Schneider wrote about the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the Chicago family who had come to Madison to find a new life and the efforts of our community, from the Mayor on down, to help them out. Much of the story is behind the Tribune’s paywall, but there is free video available.

I suppose it’s possible to decry, as many in Madison do, those who come to Madison seeking help or a new life. On the other hand, ours is a nation of immigrants, built by people who came here seeking new lives and new opportunities. There has also always been internal migration, as people moved from settled places to the frontier, or moved from the South to the North, seeking jobs in the Great Migration of the 20th century, or those millions who move South or West, for retirement or to seek new opportunities.

We welcome certain kinds of migration, or the migration of certain kinds of people–like my wife and I who moved here from South Carolina–, or all those young people who move here for college or graduate school, or to seek their fortune with Epic or some other firm.

If nice, white, well-educated people move here, we shouldn’t be surprised that working class, or African-Americans, or Hispanics come here as well, seeking new lives or new opportunities. They may only be able to work at minimum-wage jobs, but perhaps their children will get college degrees and realize whatever is left of the American Dream in the 21st Century.

The homes they left, whether in the violent neighborhoods of Chicago or in Latin America, were desperate places that offered little hope for the future. Madison may not be the place where everyone can achieve their dreams but all of us ought to do our part to make those dreams real.

This particular family’s saga is being played out in the pages of the newspaper. They have attracted the attention of the city and even the mayor. Apparently, someone has come forward to help them find housing at least for a few months. Perhaps that will give them time and space to figure other parts of their lives out. How many stories like this one remain untold? How many other homeless people, homeless families are living on the streets or in their cars, having come here to start over?

The Devil and Justice Scalia

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There was a good bit of incredulity in my twitter feed this morning in reaction to the interview with Antonin Scalia in which he confessed to belief in the devil. His response to the interviewer should have silenced the twitterverse:

You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

He’s absolutely right about the persistence of belief in the devil among American Christians, although it’s inaccurate to claim that “most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history.”

Among those concerned with Scalia’s statement is Huffington Post’s voice of liberal Protestantism, Paul Raushenbush, who’s worried about how Scalia’s belief in the Devil might affect his legal rulings. I think there’s plenty of evidence to support the idea that Scalia’s legal opinions are shaped by his underlying legal philosophy and leave the Devil out of it.

I’m actually more intrigued by other aspects of what Scalia said. First off, he volunteered the information in such a way as to suggest that he might have been trying to provoke the reporter. Second, he’s obviously thought about the Devil’s techniques–why people don’t seem to see the Devil in appearance, for example, or why the Devil doesn’t possess a herd of pigs (he got that story wrong, by the way). Scalia says, “The Devil used to be all over the place.” Scalia can only conclude from his relative absence that “he’s gotten wilier.”

What might be even more interesting is that Scalia isn’t sure whether Judias Iscariot (Jesus’ betrayer is in hell):

I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?

Now, I don’t think that belief in the reality of the Devil as depicted in much of western Art is necessary to salvation (you know, horns, forked tongue, cloven hoofs, tail, all of that). The image of the Devil as it has developed over the last 2500 years in Judaism and Christianity is an attempt to understand and personify evil. It may not be necessary to personify evil in order to begin to make sense of it and some of us may find such personification childish.

It’s easy to laugh at stories of Martin Luther throwing ink pots at the Devil. But Luther, like so many Christians before and since, sensed the power of evil in the world around them and fought mightily against it. To laugh at someone’s belief in the devil is to risk laughing at evil, dismissing evil as a figment of one’s imagination. One can’t fight evil unless one is able to name it.

Scalia points to something else: even when we perceive someone as evil incarnate, it shouldn’t be impossible to imagine them redeemed by the love of Christ. There’s a simple reason for that: as powerful as evil might be God is yet more powerful.

 

Living with a dying pet on the Feast of St. Francis

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We celebrated Blessing of the Animals at Grace on September 29, for logistical reasons. It was especially poignant for me because for the first time, we didn’t bring any of our living cats with us. Instead, I brought the ashes of Maggie Pie, who died in 2003, and Margery Kempe, who died on New Year’s Day this year. My heart was heavy because back home Thomas Merton is sharing his last days with us. He was diagnosed with cancer two months ago.

We actually thought that Merton would probably be dead by now.  He’s lost weight; the tumor in his jaw has grown; but for the most part, he seems to be enjoying life. He’s become very affectionate and since he’s lost weight, he’s taken to lying between my legs which was a favorite spot of his predecessors.

Coincidentally, at night he has begun sleeping where both Maggie and Margery slept the last months of their lives, up at the top of the bed between our pillows. Maggie slept there because it was a place of safety away from Merton, who tended to beat up on her. Merton sleeps there because it’s where he seems to want to be.

This morning, he seemed to be in a very good mood and feeling well. He played with his ball, even carried it in his mouth, and ran around the house.

So we are facing that difficult decision so many people face. With the deep love we share for our animal companions, it is extremely difficult to watch them suffer, and as difficult to imagine life without them. But when we open our homes and our hearts to them, we also accept the responsibility of caring for them in life and in death. We accept the responsibility to release them from the pain they suffer and don’t understand.

Here he is this morning, resting after his bout of play:

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