I wrote in my journal: “Laughter is one’s gift to Life.”

And the greatest gift is laughter when times are dark and tough. I love the Samuel Johnson line, “I tried to be a philosopher but cheerfulness kept breaking through.”

Hasidic Jews insist that dance in face of Job-like adversity is man’s noble answer to seeming abandonment by God.

Laughter is medicine you can’t buy but priceless to your health. I can’t do better than to quote Sam Keen:

“We are always acting but sometimes the act is painful, and sometimes it is fun. To be human is to stage your own drama. The point is not to look for an un-self-conscious life of complete spontaneity. That is impossible. The trick is to turn tragedy into comedy, to change the battlefield into a playground”
(Sam Keen, Beginnings Without End).

My Scotties know this truth. I watched Albie get careless around Merton the other day. His hoof taught her to respect his donkey ways. She limped for the rest of the day, her Scottie ego bruised more than anything else. Her response? She rushed the gate on three-legs that evening when Merton passed by on the outside, to bark what I swear was a Scottie version of “Na-nanna-na-na!” yowled into the old donkey’s face!

Laughter, whether Scottie or human, is the best medicine.

I’ve attached a short video for your humor-quotient today. It’s about the woes of ’senior moments’ when the memory slips and we can’t remember. Most of us are seniors old enough to identify with Art Linkletter’s quip, “Old age is no place for sissies!” What to do? Answer: laugh, and Life chuckles along with you!

http://www.rtbot.net/play.php?id=Xv1tMioGgXI

Laugh … and enjoy! It’s your gift to Life.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

My dogs are models of what my mother used to call “the big head.” The Scottish Terrier’s dignity and sense of ‘self’ seem at times to know no bounds. To their minds lions are inferiors and other dogs are, well, beneath their dignity!

Having ‘the big head’ may be a fact of life for the Scottish Terrier, both literally and metaphorically, but it doesn’t have to be for us. The danger of the self-importance of the “big head” is pretense to knowledge and the false confidence which follows. Long ago Charles Darwin observed that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” True education, in fact, ought to make one humble, modest, and even tentative for it exposes you to how little you actually know and to how much there is yet to learn. Dignity, therefore, balanced by humbling realities of fallibility and ignorance is what we need in ourselves and the world.

While I don’t deny that a Scottie’s ‘big head’ can get him in trouble and therefore might be a model of imbalance to be counteracted in our own lives, what I’m drawing attention to here is something more. My Scotties have enormous dignity but they are also capable of whimsical goofiness and in that contradiction I find a worthy model of harmony and balance.

It’s not easy balancing dignity and levity in one’s soul but we know instinctively such balance is necessary to the harmonious life. My Gus, who died at fifteen, sauntered and shuffled around our walled patios seemingly lost in his own wee world of scents and treasured yesterdays. He was the embodiment of the gravitas of old age. Yet, for all his years, no one performed a goofier ‘dance’ when it was time to lick bowls or for a treat. Dignity be damned; it was show time!

On the whole, however, it is not silliness but dignity which defines the Scottie soul and which evokes my admiration. Indeed, it is the enormous depth of the Scottie’s native dignity, his seriousness over life, which make his moments of whimsy stand out in bold relief.

I like that recipe of deep dignity touched by whimsy, especially as I grow older and wade ever deeper into life’s complexities. Human affairs are complicated and messy and call for the right mix of gravitas and levity. Laughter to lighten up the load, mixed liberally with heavy doses of wisdom and earnestness and collaboration, give us balance to make sense out of the nonsense of life.

My quest for order and harmony in my life and my vision of Scottish Terrier embodiment of a wholesome blend of dignity touched by whimsy merge as a life-lesson important to me.

For my own life I want poise, but I want passion within that poise; I want seriousness, but I want whimsy, too, such as can burst illusions of self-importance. I want balance in myself.

In these matters I can’t do better than to embody virtues I see larger than life in my Scotties’ character!

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

The story tells of a city-slicker whose eye for up-scale style was drawn to a farmer’s derelict old barn. The weathered barn boards, which to the farmer were reason for demolition and replacement, were expensive suburban home remodel treasures to the city visitor. So the moral of the barn philosopher was clear: there is value in the weathered face and life which we may not see, and we must change our perspective to recognize the treasure we may too readily throw away.

It seems to me the original barn philosopher, while making a useful point about our need to value our lines and wrinkles and scars that reveal we’ve weathered our storms of life, misses a subtle but important point at the heart of the story about barns–and everything else in our lives–and why they ultimately matter.

In the Old Barn story the farmer as well as the “city type” see the barn strictly in terms of its appearance and consequences of weathering. I’m suspicious we don’t have a farmer’s perspective in the original story; we have two versions of urban cachet, one slightly less superficial than the other.

That’s what is ‘beautiful’ in old barns … but not a mention of any of it appeared in that Old Barn narrative. That’s why I think a different perspective is called for. The beauty of old barns, like the beauty of good dogs and a spouse’s aging face, has everything to do with habits of the heart and nothing to do with anything so superficial as style or appearance.

I remember standing in an old barn not so long ago not far from my home in the historic Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico asking the owner to tell me the story of its grand array of horse stalls. Forty years past its prime, empty now except for hay bales, “The Hayman” began slowly his story of the barn’s glory days of horse breeding, racing, and showmanship. In his 80s, pointing with his cane, he identified his famous horses’ stalls and their stories, and the accomplishments of his youth. With eyes sparkling and a new vigor in his voice and gesture, he relived for a moment his loves and his life in that old barn.

Patina on the paint? Signs of weather and age? Sure. But that’s not the mystique of “The Hayman’s” barn. And you can’t get that old man’s moist eyes or the authenticity in his voice by buying barn wood off his old barn and paneling your upscale ‘country’ home with it. No. You have to be owned by a barn to share its mystique, just as you must be owned by a Scottie to share theirs and you must belong to another for better or for worse across time to share an aging spouse’s beauty and true worth.

Old barns, like much-loved dogs, are witnesses, not to ‘style’ but to Life well-aged and gratefully remembered.

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

Anybody half-awake these days is aware there are a lot of folks supremely confident they know God’s mind and purpose, and exceedingly self-confident of knowing not just some truth but all of it that counts.

Now, I know a thing or two about the big head, especially since it is my breed who invented it. So I can spot swagger farther than a Hubble telescope. I’m seeing swagger in religion these days to make a MacSwaggerMeister blush.

The problem, you see, is not certitude; goodness knows, when it’s natural and earned, it’s a Scottie-beautiful thing. However, there’s a problem when it doesn’t correspond to reality. Let me put this as delicately as I can: the ‘almighty’ department is beyond the human pay grade.

What got me thinking about this was a recent trek up Tomé Hill at Easter time when Dad and I got separated on the wild side of the hill. There we were, a University of Kentucky Ph.D. lost in religious contemplation and a genuine MacWhiz on four-inch legs following Scottie MacBliss, when Dad suddenly panicked because I wasn’t at his heels and pronounced me “lost.” I, Albie, of Las Golondrinas, matron and ruler of my universe, one who has all the senses and who is but a whisker away from deity herself, I was deemed lost on a sacred mountain. The unmitigated effrontery! One minute Dad and I were on a mission together in search of ancient petroglyphs, I, relishing the delicious freedom of being off-lead in the ‘wilderness,’ and the next moment, Dad had his underwear in a knot convinced I was lost and had to be saved!

Now, it occurred to me in that moment that in truth what needs ‘salvation’ in the world of men is human modesty in the ‘almighty’ department; the only thing ‘lost’ in our case was Dad’s sense of control. I wasn’t ‘lost’ at all . . . I simply was lingering over my own bliss on Tomé Hill.

But therein lie the hazards of human ‘Almightitude’: humans who can’t quite figure out Scotties, who don’t know the difference between ‘lost’ and ‘independent,’ to say nothing of the nuances of much else in life that beetles and birds take for granted, are less than qualified as Hot-Damn-Experts in the eternal truth department!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and elaborate.

Ten years ago Willie climbed nearby Tomé Hill on Good Friday and wrote about it in Great Scots Magazine. Dad and I climbed the hill this year. We waited till Monday after Easter so we could have the place all to ourselves—and we did, too, but for one tiny finch who greeted us at the top.

Dad says Tomé is a sacred place in New Mexico. Second only to the church at Chimayo in northern NM. as ‘sanctuario,’ Tomé village processions, pagaents, and Easter celebrations at the hill are way older than USA’s birthday in 1776. You see, Tomé Hill is scarcely a quarter-mile from my house, and our old place is right on the ancient Camino Real at a convergence of two modern pilgrimage roads to the Hill. So by dawn each Good Friday I’m hearing pilgrims’ feet and muffled voices—I hear and I observe and I have opinions. Mine are mature opinions, too, mind you, since I’m now senior to Willie when he spoke out on these matters. So hear my experience with pilgrims, shrines, and holy places.

For one thing I couldn’t help noticing that whereas thousands went up the Hill on Good Friday it was deserted on Monday. Dad says the Hill is only “calendar holy” to most pilgrims, not really a sacred place every day of the year. Sort of like church buildings all the other days of the week.Now, as far as the Hill goes, that’s not entirely a bad thing since the solitude of the place every other day of the year appeals to Dad and me when we can go up and have it to ourselves. I don’t wish to speak against Good Friday’s enthusiasm, but I do wonder about the ‘calendar’ approach to piety. Holiness once a year is better than a year without any, I suppose, but I kind of feel sorry for holiness and holy places the other days of the year.

And something else. I think many of the Christian pilgrims who travel the pilgrim roads up Tomé Hill have misread scripture—you know, the Book of Revelation, the last one in the Christian New Testament, where the Spirit symbolically “speaketh to the (seven) churches” of Asia. I suspect many of our pilgrims misread that text to say ‘litter’ rather than ‘letters’ to the churches! And our brand of pilgrim must be the litter-alist kind because the trail up the Hill on Monday bore the litter signs of litter-alists gone to seed.

Dad says literalism in religion is idolatry. He says the problem is Christianity as commonly practiced is not earthly enough: pilgrims don’t recognize that litter and trash are spiritual matters, too. He says you can’t pray for God to cure the cough and affirm the smokestack which causes it; you can’t treat wilderness as priceless and East St. Louis as worthless. Either all the earth deserves our respect or none does; either all our actions show our respect or none do.

I think he’s right. Now, I’m not saying Tomé Hill should be “holy ground” in the ancient sense where Moses had to take off his shoes to enter—Doggies! We’d cut the pilgrim population to nothing overnight if they had to hazard on their bare paws the goathead stickers I deal with everyday! ‘Prickle Me, Elmo’—we’d have ‘litter-ing’ on Tomé Hill of a different kind as crippled saints got carried off the hill on litters!

On second thought, maybe our Hill should be “holy ground” in that biblical sense. We’d separate the ‘would-be’ from the devotee if everyone had to go up the Hill barefoot and we’d stop the littering on the way up if this rule were enforced: if you toss litter, the Medi-Vacs won’t litter you and your bloody feet down off the Hill!

And another thing. Back when Dad and Willie wrote about going up the Hill they photographed a fallen-down sign just off the trail entreating pilgrims to “Repent.” Today, all traces of that sign are gone. I suppose that’s because humans don’t ‘repent’ anymore. They just “stay the course.”

Now, this is a very big problem. Big, because of all species on the planet, of all who truly need the practice of serious and authentic ‘repentance’—indeed, on a daily basis!—it’s humans. After all, it’s not turtles who are causing dangerous levels of greenhouse gases; it’s not partridges who are dangerously warming our pear trees!

So, this wee bright spot of intelligence in our galaxy proposes a new and inviolate rule from this day forward and applicable each and every day hereafter: every human must begin every day with repentance—repenting for known wrongs, of course, like trashing roads and paths and the middle-east, for instance—but way beyond that, repenting on principle, and in general, for being so utterly and dangerously human! In other words, for turning the human predicament into jeopardy for every living thing.

And that brings me back to where I began—the issue of ‘Almightitude’ in human affairs. I’m sorry to puncture illusions, but of all creatures on the planet, humans are the self-confessed “fallen” ones, and therefore the least qualified to wear almightyness.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike humans. In fact, I’m more than fond of mine. Dad is bright and even clever, as humans go, and has qualities which I truly admire (Example: I like to imagine what genius I could unleash using a can opener if I had opposable thumbs!).

No. I’m not anti-human. I’m just proposing a new era of human modesty . . . and maybe that we keep sharp objects and explosives out of human hands for the next millennium.

That’s my ‘Tomé Truth’ from my recent outing up Tomé Hill. On the touchy subject of who is and who is not ‘lost’ and who needs ‘saving;’ on the matter of the mighty and the Almighty, it boils down to this: if you can’t fathom the mind of a Scottish Terrier—and no human can— you’re not ready for ‘Almightitude,’ nor are you qualified to be spokesman for the Pearly Gates, and you’re most certainly NOT ready to claim certainty over the mind of the One Upstairs.

It’s time for a little modesty, please, in the human peanut gallery.

Guest Author: Albie in collaboration with scribe, Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

“But in the current dearth of good men you must be less particular in your choice. Still, you must especially avoid those who are gloomy and always lamenting, and who grasp at every pretext for complaint. Though a man’s loyalty and kindness may not be in doubt, a companion who is agitated and groaning about everything is an enemy to peace of mind.”
Seneca (c. 5 BC - AD 65)

The old stoic philosopher’s counsel resonates for me. The “gloomy and always lamenting” are more than tedious to be around, they’re “an enemy to peace of mind.”

That’s a prime reason why the Scottish Terrier suits me perfectly as companion: they don’t grasp at pretexts for complaint. In fact, they hardly ever ‘complain’ at all. They can be so ‘stoical’ in bearing pain or physical injury, so outwardly unaffected by affliction, problems are late detected. They’re called the “Diehard” for a reason, and it’s that hardiness of spirit, that gritty toughness in their constitution, that makes Scottish Terriers the opposite of Seneca’s moody complainers—and my ideal companion on the road of life.

But if Seneca avoided gloomy souls as enemies to his peace of mind, this curmudgeon finds an eternal smiley-face equally hard to tolerate. I distrust fixed smiley-faces, and being told “look-on-the-bright-side” can be as annoying as doom-and-gloom when it’s a predictable, mindless cliche.

Again, that’s why my Scotties suit my soul. My Scotties are neither pissy complainers nor always-grinning-fools. They know how to growl if a situation calls for it, how to raise the roof in protest when something menacing is afoot, and also how to ignore me when my demands don’t make sense to them! My dogs don’t complain, but neither do they roll-over in slathering acceptance of whatever I want or whatever comes along.

I like that balance—in dogs and in people. It’s a worthy ideal I find embodied in Scottie-fur coats!

Trouble is, balance is hard to achieve in my life, and harder still to maintain. It requires a connoisseur’s modulating of yin/yang, push/pull counter forces in one’s soul, revving up one impulse while toning down another. Imbalance is easy. Balance is an art.

I find balance is a challenge with my dogs, with the content of Great Scots Magazine, with my mini-farm animals, and our mini-farm itself. Benefit/Cost ratios are useless because my ‘good life’ balance-sheet is typically more wildly manic than balanced, spiking to euphoria over Burnsie’s water ecstasies or a little red hen’s ‘homemade’ fresh eggs to despair over our donkeys’ hooves eroding the base of our adobe wall! Up and down, all over the emotional map, chasing ‘balance.’ I worry about imbalance in the pages of the magazine: Scottish Terrier health issues can easily appear “gloomy and always lamenting” … but a diet of ‘fluff’ pieces and a permanent smiley-face wallpapered over breed health issues is inauthentic. Balance in life, I find, is not a science; it calls for connoisseurship of fine-tuned judgment.

The clue, I believe, to peace and joy in the good life is not so much getting it right, but getting it real. That’s where my Scotties are consummate teachers. They never fret over right or wrong or appearances. Their actions and reactions are always and only expressions of what is real for them in that situation. When Albie limps up to me, carrying her paw, I know it’s not a game; she has a real goat-head sticker embedded in her pad and needs help getting it out.

I can learn from that with reference to myself and my choices, with reference to my dogs, with reference to choices in friends. What is crucial in me, my actions, my choices, is keeping it real. True, I need balance … but at even deeper levels, for this blogger’s good life, none of it matters unless it’s real.

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

Dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

[Tao Te Ching]

Above the entry gate to my home in New Mexico hangs a colorful, artistic banner as sentinel of welcome. It has more than earned its keep, surviving occasional fierce and relentless high desert wind storms. The author’s house banner at Las Golondrinas, on its natural bamboo rod, has outlasted three metal mounting brackets each screwed solidly into a massive beam. One of the brackets broke, two bent irreparably; none survived the force of driving winds, as has the banner on its flexible bamboo pole. As the Tao Te Ching says: “The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.”

The good life—especially Scottish Terrier companionship—revolves around the give and take, push-me-pull-you dance of will that calls us to bend without breaking. To earn a graduate degree in ‘Scottish Terrier Ways’ is to learn the secret of bamboo and the jeopardy of the inflexible bracket. You don’t stay with this breed if you don’t learn how to bend! And if our Scotties live to grow old with us, it is because in various ways they learn how to bend without breaking, too.

Easter’s message of Resurrection and hope is a drama of how the soft and supple prevails. “Thy will be done” only appeared to end in brokenness and death in the tomb. Easter is the message that the Son of Man’s yielding triumphed.

It’s worth thinking about: “… whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.”

Which are you, inflexible or yielding, bracket or bamboo?

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

Samuel Butler once wrote:

“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”

This is welcome reminder on this day which we label “April Fool’s Day.” Like most everything else in our lives, our Scotties are better at it than we are!

But the ‘fool’ label tells more about our priggishness, our mores and hangups than anything else. Our bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, pointy-eared Scotties could hardly care less about our political correctness. To them fun is its own justification. End of story.

When I irrigate my pea patch and Burnsie comes running back to me soaking-wet and gritty with sand and mud in his coat wearing a smile bigger than heaven itself, who’s the fool when all I can think about is the impending extra chore cleaning him off in the bathtub? What joys do I forfeit because I dwell on the cleanup instead of sharing Burnsie’s romp by soaking this fool’s head in his baptism of uninhibited play?

It’s April Fool’s Day … a gift from the gods.

Time to put aside priggish, too-self-important ‘maturity’ and enjoy immaturing rather-well with your dog. Make some royal FUN! Go for it.

Your Scottie already started without you.

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

Those who lived with Francis of Assisi, the 13th century patron saint of animals and birds, remembered “… he used to call all creatures by the name of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ …” (see: Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. I, The Saint, pp. 250-251). The earliest Francis documents show his language of brotherhood encompassed not only animals and birds but also insects, flowers, sky, wind, water, fire, and death. To know the circumstances surrounding Francis’ disinheritance by his family lends important drama to how and why this emotional and sensitive man came to sing of “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon,” in praise of all creatures great and small. Orphaned in Assisi, Francis adopted a brotherhood of all creation.

We know today through recent genetics research that there is far more to the fraternal language of Francis than semantics and metaphor. We are related to all other living things. We are family. Human beings share 98.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees, 95% with other primates, and 40%—almost half—our DNA is virtually identical in basic structure to that of “simple” creatures as lowly as the nematode C. elegans! (see: David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place In Nature (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2007). Recognizing that only 1.5% of the human genome is actually “ours” while the rest is common to other living things makes the brotherhood of creatures of Francis more appropriate than even he knew.

While the language of “Brother Scottie” may be quaint to our ears, the concept of Scotties as family is not. So much so, in fact, with reference to Francis’ fraternal way the Scottie experience actually goes deeper. Our bonds to our dogs are closer than typical links between brothers. Our Scotties own places in our hearts normally reserved for children.

It is this parent/child affection for our dogs which explains why burying them is such trauma. It also helps account for why we sacrifice so much for our dogs’ welfare, often providing medical care and attention for them we deny ourselves. “He’s not heavy; he’s my brother …” says a popular song. The poetry of our lives with Scotties suggests the lyric, “He’s not heavy; he’s my baby!”

What is inspiring about Francis’ fraternal way with animals and what is needed in our own practice is his inclusivity. He embraced in his brotherhood of creation the lowly as well as the loveable, from crows, to worms, to lepers, whereas we may practice kindness beyond measure to “Brother Scottie” but be unresponsive elsewhere.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

Carved on a pair of antique doors from Mexico, hanging high on the wall of my woodworking shop in full view from my Great Scots Magazine office window, is an Albuquerque artist’s rendering of the legend of Saint Isadore. I love the story, the icon, and my mural’s daily reminder of the importance of both work and prayer.

I must admit, as a young man I shared Isadore’s belief that he must choose between work and/or prayer. As a young clergyman officiating the rituals of organized religion, ‘work’ which kept parishioners away from church services was part of the ’sin’ I felt it was my job to cleanse from errant lives. Looking back on it, I see my worries had more to do with my agenda and my sermon “pearls” treated as optional; little in my jousting at windmills for God had to do with what was authentically divine.

I’ve come to view the implicit tension between work and prayer in the San Ysidro story as a false dilemma. I no longer see work and prayer as rivals. Wendell Berry, the agrarian poet and essayist, said it best in his collected poems, A Timbered Choir :

Be thankful and repay
Growth with good work and care.
Work done in gratitude
Kindly, and well, is prayer.

I believe all this has very real application to our lives with Scottish Terriers because transcending the false bind between prayer and work is of one piece with embracing the sacredness of the commonplace where we discover our highest good in lowliest places. Some may think I as writer and publisher of Great Scots Magazine have privileged place for engaging Scotties at their heights and depths through stories celebrating dogs who own our hearts. But the simple truth is, there is no higher joy in Scottish Terriers, no deeper expression of love and devotion, no more profound experience of companionship with Scotties, than in daily sacraments of simple chores devoted to your dog’s health and friendship.

My early years were spent in holy restlessness driven by ambitions heavy with self-privileged notions of God’s ‘work’. My dogs are teaching me simpler ways and I believe, holier. I continue to admire the legend of San Ysidro–at least in the sense I now believe we meet our own best angels, not in formal prayer rituals, but in earnest “work, done in gratitude, kindly, and well.”

I will purge my mind of the airy claims
of church and state. I will serve the earth
and not pretend my life could better serve.

Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine

This week two deaths invaded my little world. A cousin-in-law, long a favorite in-law in my life, husband to my ‘kissin’-cousin’ from boyhood days, was killed in a recreational accident. Locally news came this week of the death of the mother of a business colleague and friend following a long and difficult illness.

Since Charlotte’s death, more deeply than ever, I’ve come to share Rainer Maria Rilke’s reproach of all modern religions for supplying believers with consolations and embellishments of death instead of providing the means in our soul to accommodate and reach agreement with it. Death, when we embrace it rather than run away from it, when we linger to learn it’s truth instead of fleeing to an after-life, opens us to grasp this pure secret: the meaning of Death is living; it is the existential truth that we have but NOW to live hard and good and fast.

Nels, my cousin-in-law, preceded me as a widower when my cousin died of liver cancer four years ago.  He knew the anguish that strikes like a fist and that vast solitude which follows. In time he opened himself again to life and love when he found a girl friend and only recently married her. They were deliciously happy, giddy in fact, as only seniors can be over the ‘miracle’ of puppy love late in life.

Nels and his new wife were relishing being ‘kids’ again when he was killed. They were together enjoying off-road four-wheel ATV riding when Nels lost control of his four-wheeler and it rolled over, crushing him. He died instantly. His death came in the rush of being with the one he loved, pursuing what he loved, and doing it passionately.

That’s as good an ‘end’ as it gets in my book and a salutary Life-lesson to be gleaned.

By contrast, my local friend’s mother died after a lingering, agonizing bout against cancer and old age. Death by wasting and worry and slow-motion helplessness has become the hidden ‘gift’ of modern medicine’s single-minded fixation on keeping us alive at all costs. In our culture we don’t get to choose something as personal as our own Death, but when we hold the hand or the paw of the dying we can choose how we compost their death into life.

My task when facing the death of a loved-one, whether human or Scottie, is to fully explore what I was to them and what they were and are to me; to crystallize what the dead one expected of me, what they hoped for me, what they wished for me. And then out of my loss and grief I am called in their death to continue their life in my own, completing their dream for me. In this way their death is not about ends but beginnings, not about loss but life.

Seneca said long ago that life is not short if one knows how to live it. There is no dying an unlived life when you live each day what you truly love. To be  present in death, as in life, is to match its intensity, not merely endure its length, but match its depth.

That’s not easy. That’s why it typically takes a lifetime to learn Ernest Becker’s truth (The Denial of Death) that the meaning of life is learning how to die. Trouble is, as slow-learners in the pain-classes of Life, held back from graduating, we typically learn Death’s truth about living so late we leave little or no opportunity in which to harvest soulful living. Said another way: the deepest lesson of death, whether early or late, is to get on with living each day the life you love.

I already miss Nels, miss knowing he’s out there blazing trails for me and others in the art of living the life you love and loving the life you live. But he’s not gone; he’s carrying-on in my heart as model that Death is everyday companion in Life, not the enemy who shows up at the scene at the end. Living fully human and fully alive, living each day knowing it could be our last, living soulfully and gratefully, Death turns out to be midwife for our most joyful living.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine