Church of the Dog, by Kaya McLaren

          My friend found Church of the Dog at the Herbert Wescoat Memorial (McArthur, Ohio) library book sale. She was charmed and amused by the title, as we have joked (not with great originality) about god being dog spelled backwards. We also go to church together and we both love (fiercely and delightedly) our dogs. She has a powerful golden retriever named Bailey and I have my nimble multibreed Marigold. So, Church of the Dog intrigued us on several levels before we even opened the book or read the kudos on the back cover. At 25 cents, how could we resist this book? My friend made the purchase.
          In a few weeks, she brought the book to me. She was consternated by it and offered it to me. I thought, oh no, is it all about sex or something? Then, I thought, it must be something else, because sex would probably not consternate this particular friend. So I took it and started in on it. My first impressions were not good. The book is based in an alternate spirituality that borders on witchcraft, but in a beautiful, nature-oriented way. The heroine travels in her dreams to meet other dreamers and sometimes meet with deceased people who were released to this dreamland world upon death. She reads auras and with special giftedness can manage auras--her own, those of others, and even large scale auras such as that surrounding a high school just after a Columbine-type shooting. (She and other “dreamers” dream-travel there like a team of psychic first responders.) This is not a type of spirituality I enjoy reading about.
 
          But, my friend wanted my impressions, so I struggled on. I had the book with me when I went to Denver on business at the end of October (2012). In the hotel room it was read or die of bad TV. I felt myself begin to submerge into the book, to accept instead of fight its premises and I started to enjoy the story and all of its fey qualities.
          At base, Church of the Dog is about transformation, about dealing with the painful blows life can sometimes inflict, about moving through and beyond, incorporating. The heroine is a traveler, a wanderer. She becomes (lets herself become) entangled with a family of farmers in Washington state or Oregon (can’t remember) that consists of an elderly married couple and the grandson they raised. Their son and daughter-in-law had been killed when the grandson was eight years old. The grandson survived the accident, shielded by the body of his dead mother.

          The trauma of the accident left the remaining family frozen in fear, guilt, pain. The deus ex machina heroine gradually thaws out this family, beginning with grandma, then grandpa, and finally with the grandson, now in his late 20s. She uses auras, saunas, hot springs, spiritual artifacts from many faith traditions and especially dancing as her tools. The dancing is especially wonderful and is a wonderful metaphor for the need for each of them to begin to dance the dance of life again. The descriptions of the dancing are rhythmic, lyrical, literally moving as well as figuratively. The old couple is reawakened in their love for each other as well as in their awareness of their grandson’s unfinishedness, frozenness. He has much business to attend to (the business of living) and needs to be freed to do it.

          That’s the basic story. I will not be giving spoilers. I recommend Church of the Dog as a little piece of beauty in our world, a book about benevolence and healing. Even if you don’t buy into the new age spirituality, the transformations of the characters are powerful, moving, and engaging. I felt pain with them and the tears of whatever it is when you untie a tough knot, untangle a necklace, release a tight fist. The tears come from the pain released when the blockage eases. It’s the shake of earth when the tectonic plates slip past a snag or the tsunami raises from a great movement under the sea.
         If you cannot step outside your own belief system for a little while to enjoy this book, I feel for you. I’ve had that problem with books--some of the ones on this very blog. And many, many times I have stepped inside the beliefs of Christianity to enjoy a book from within that perspective. Diving in the pond of another way of viewing the world is why I read in the first place. But sometimes I just can’t do it. Like, I’m not sure I could dive into the pond of totalitarianism to enjoy Mein Kampf, for example; or swim with hatred theologists. We all have our limits. So, if you can make it happen, enjoy Church of the Dog with me. I am warmer inside and more forgiving for having read it.