catching up is hard to do

"I've noticed that you haven't blogged in two weeks," wrote my mother in an email today. Sad that blogging is my most prominent communication mode? Sad that blogging equals breathing? Not sure. What I do know for sure is that life is hectic and that means that G-d has taken a backseat though I've still managed to squeeze in my meditation meetings.

What makes life so blaringly, blindingly hectic is my little dog, Maddy. Every spare moment (of which there are few) is spent trying to catch up on mundane life chores like dishes and laundry and email. Everyday she grows a little more used to my patterns and pitterings. Everyday she grows a little more into my heart too.

Having Maddy has made me more aware of the tiniest of feelings. She's caused me to be more attuned to the pain and suffering that Buddhism talks about and that has been so elusive to me. Last week a fellow teacher brought a wild frog into a school after a student had found it on the playground. The teacher was using this happenstance moment as a teachable one. Seeing that helpless frog whose world has been turned upside inside a clear plastic jar made me pine for Maddy. I suddenly saw that this frog was feeling was Maddy felt when I brought her home, stripped of everything she understood. But, the little frog didn't need to be tamed or learn to love a human. All I could think when I passed him in the hallway sitting on a table was, "free the frog!"

So maybe I'm finding G-d in my little Maddog. She's awakening insights in me when I have the time to think about the little things she shows me. And sometimes it doesn't even take that time, but just the fact that Maddy is always with me, in the back of mind like her leash is tugging on me. I find myself calmer, quieter, nicer because I want to do better since she's there. Isn't this the way that G-d is suppose to work? Her omnipresence keeps me connected to her in an unspeakable way. So much so that I understand why Dorothy clung to her Toto in the Wizard of Oz and defied the Wicked Witch of the West from hurting either one of them. It's now, "me and my dog." There is no more "I." So, bring it world! Maddy and me are ready to play and whatever twists and turns and hectic times you throw at me, you might just hear me cackle, "And my little dog too!"