Hey Bird Dog, Get Away From My Quail

According to Celestial regarding one of her dreams, dogs to God represent fallenness, rejection and reproach. Essentially almost whatever that is forbidden and abhorred by the Lord, not helped by that literal dogs are now regarded as the third worst invasive species after cats and rats. This is what I got from listening to a sermon on YouTube about the topic of ‘beware of dogs’ and this was got brought up in some way, in which whatever the Bible says about something turn out to be true. Well in some way or another in this case, though that doesn’t mean positive portrayals of dogs don’t exist in the Bible.

It is however rare and often in the context of either shepherding (Job), comeuppance (what Jezebel got), helping those in need (what Jesus said regarding poor people going to Heaven) and also in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. This also gets played out within the wider scope of Christianity, there are uses for dogs in Christian monasteries. Among those are guarding, hunting vermin (as it is in Arizona, USA) and helping the blind. There are some Christian saints associated with dogs, though it’s possible the thing with Jezebel is a matter of God using the wicked to punish the wicked. Dogs are one of those in this regard.

Then there is the association with dogs with witchcraft, as it is with some folk demonologies whether in early modern France or contemporary Ghana. It doesn’t help when there’s a Bible verse that mentions dogs together with witches (though this is helped by a sermon that I listened to before), that it seems dogs will usually be portrayed in a suspicious manner throughout the Bible and to some extent, Christianity as a whole given they’re seen as unclean in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

We Suffer Together

St Julian of Norwich had a vision of God when she was sick, which lasted for days, so it’s likely this is what drew her closer to him in such a time. It’s likely God sometimes uses trials and tribulations to have us draw closer to him, sometimes we ask for it like I did one time but that’s because I wasn’t feeling right from losing so many dogs at the time. When we feel awful, God is there to come to us. When we’ve done wrong and feel like we need God at this point, then it’s a sign of wanting repentance and also the need to have faith when one feels at their lowest.

Sometimes when I regret what I’ve done before, such as wishing for the death of an animal, I often come to God to give me an animal a lot like it. Same with abusing an animal before, that God understands the pain that comes with regret. When you suffer for the Lord, he suffers with you too. He understands how you feel, what you want and need and so on. He may not always answer immediately, or in the way you want it to be. But he does intercede, sometimes giving us something greater or more than what we asked for. It could be having more dogs than one had, more surviving and healthier dogs at that.

It could be having a nicer cat to play with and so on, I actually prayed to God to give us a dog a lot like the one we recently lost but we got another cat instead. St Julian knew these kinds of pains and tribulations she underwent is what drew her closer to God, going to so far to write about these experiences and what she wants others to know about the journey she’s been through. Same with Henri Nouwen, the more I think about it, the more it’s true he wanted to share his experiences and revelations to others. So it’s a good thing Julian wrote a lot to share it to others.

These serve as both revelations and devotionals of sorts.

Pornos for Pyros

Cardinal Heenan had something to say about the mainstreaming of porn, especially whenever people try to justify the things they want to popularise. Like they want to dress their stuff as if it’s more sophisticated and mature than it actually is, not just getting more explicit but also more blasphemous and obscene. Perhaps it’s unsurprisingly it has worsened over time, getting more disturbing each time with snuff and the like. That’s not to say people can’t be educated about say sexual organs and marital relationships, though I think there’s a line between desensitisation to pornographic material in whatever form they appear in and proper sex education.

The latter shouldn’t just end at marriage, relationships and sexual organs but also fostering a respect for marriage, boundaries to which sexual practices can be done and which shouldn’t as well as loving others the way God needs us to. As for romance novels and their ilk, they too are getting more explicit over time. It’s not enough to have a merely handsome hero fall in love with the heroine, but the sex act and the sexualisastion of the hero has to be more explicit. It’s not a stretch to go from mere romantic encounters to disguised hints at sex organs to outright depictions of sex, I feel of all the literary genres it’s romance that’s inherently flawed because it has lust baked in it.

Heroes can’t just be handsome but they also have to fit either one of the many fetish categories, whether if he’s another ethnicity, has piercings or tattoos. He could even be a demon, which is the most disturbing of all in addition to a number of dark romance novels whose plot points and stories seem like what Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade would’ve easily come up with in his lifetime, I have struggled with lust at various points and I feel it needs to be talked about more often. If it’s something that makes you lust, whether if it’s an art book featuring nudes or a romance novel then the precipice is always there in some form or another.

The Bible is very simple about this that if it’s something that makes you lust, get rid of it as much as you can and get rid of the offending material. It could be a romance novel for some people, it could be an art book for others but the problem’s still the same.