Micah 4:1-5

Perhaps God didn’t talk to me through my dog.
Perhaps it just seemed that way-not just to me, and to a friend who witnessed the event. But, considering that God has employed burning bushes and images of the Virgin to communicate with mortals, maybe my lop-eared, Roman-nosed coon hound wasn’t such an outlandish choice for a conduit between God and me.

A few years ago. I was renting a small cabin on the grape ranch my friend David Steiner owned and operated on Sonoma Mountain. One day, we decided to go salmon fishing. Somehow, though, I sensed I had forgotten something. Fishing license? I checked: it was in my wallet. Something still disturbed me, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. We faced an hour drive to Bodega Bay, and the boat left at five o’clock-no time to dither. We took off. From the ranch, Sonoma Mountain Road snakes down a hill for a half mile. Well before we reached the bottom, my vague unease changed to epiphany: the sodas. Or the Pepsi Lights, more accurately – a six pack of Steiner’s favorite nonalcoholic beverages. We had left them in the refrigerator.
“What’s the deal?” grumbled Steiner.
“Pepsis,” I rasped. “We forgot ’em.”
But as I looked for a driveway to use as a turnaround, my headlights illuminated the eyes of a large animal in the road. It was proceeding toward us with an oddly spavined gait, one I recognized immediately. Megan. My big hound dog.

I was irritated to see Megan. I pulled up next to her, opening the door. “Give me that, Megan,” I said, grabbing her booty. It was a six-pack of icy cans. I held them up to the windshield, so we could see what they were. Pepsi Lights, so cold they were rimmed with frost from Steiner’s fridge. (We looked when we got home; the sodas were still there in the refrigerator. So, where did Megan’s icy cans come from?)
I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I looked down at Megan, who gazed up at me with her blank, vaguely expectant expression. We sat for a minute in the dark, spinning through possible scenarios. Did she find them in Steiner’s fridge? Had she found an ice chest in the road? Did some friendly passerby give her a six-pack, thinking her a thirsty hound in need of hydration?
Or was some higher power involved? How could this happen at the precise moment David and I were discussing not mere beverages, not generic soft drinks-but Pepsi Lights? Was this some kind of a sign??
“I know this must mean something,” Steiner said, “but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is.”

I’ve been importuned by people peddling spiritual nostrums all my life. Neighborhood preachers, evangelical fire-breathers, Hare Krishnites. I was immune to them all. None offered what I needed most: proof. Only my dog could do that. I could not have entertained the prospect that a heaven or God existed before I saw Megan jackknifed in the middle of the road, a six-pack hanging from her maw. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think there may be something-out there.

Something beyond this world!

Glen Martin

Comment:
God’s unseen hand reaches out to us in strange ways – a burning bush; a faithful dog. Glen and David’s comical encounter with David’s dog, Megan, made them sit up and wonder if this wasn’t God’s unseen hand attempting to turn them away from a casual agnosticism. It brought them to a sense of something greater than themselves, something out there, guiding and directing their lives.

Fr. Hugh Duffy