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.

Airport Rant

Here's a blow-by-blow of my latest air travel torment at Denver International Airport, pictured above.


DENVER AIRPORT: BAD MAMMAL

Blogger on a plane--looks
just like me, too

How many blog entries have been written while sitting on an airport runway trapped inside a plane that is going NOWHERE. It is the ultimate rant topic--time to kill (or, time being murdered), external locus of control (powerlessness), anxiety (how long will my ride wait at my destination point), hunger, thirst, and unappeasable bladder pressure.

And, I have sort of gone commando by opening this laptop and typing away against explicit instruction to not use electronical devices. At least if they drag me off the plane I’ll be OFF THE PLANE. I was going to write a literary blog as soon as we got in the air and received permission to compute. I was going to use my time productively and for the betterment of humanity.

Instead, I have devolved into rant mode, acidic and snarky. My natural tendency to lead the opposition has been triggered. Why do we not revolt? Why do 100 paying customers sit here like calves stuck in the castrating chute or like passive droolers waiting to be instructed. (“Close mouth now.”) What we lack, I think, is leadership, for someone (not me, please) to stand up and speak out and ask the most fundamental question of human existence--”why can’t we at least go to the bathroom?!?” I can hear the ensuing chorus of yeahs, amens, and gotta-go-pees peppering the dry recycling air.

The de-icing process--I think we need to put a few of
these into Denver Airport's Christmas stocking

I’m stuck on a runway in Denver. I have now been on the plane for over two hours. Although it was well documented that snow was coming, (we started talking about it at our conference yesterday morning) the airport was apparently not ready to de-ice the number of planes it had scheduled to take off. Our plane has been number five in line for de-icing for nearly an hour. Meanwhile, the weather system we could have flown out of is socking us in like the lid on a Tupperware bowl.

We’re already on the red-eye flight back to Columbus, Ohio, where we still face a two-hour drive home to Vinton County. My eyes will be dead, not red, by then. And I am already exhausted from attending a three-day conference that crammed my head so full with ideas and issues that I’m at a loss right now to make sense of it all.  I hope this intervening ordeal does not drive out the previous few days of experience in the same way that a concussion blanks out the most recent events before the injury.

Battlestar Galactica pilot and various ships in the blowing up process. Were any humans still on board?

Now we see planes being removed from the runway and dragged back to the gates. The last plane that shambled by was completely dark, like all occupants had expired. United in death on United Airlines. It reminds me of a sci-fi episode in which a spaceship thought to be both empty and in enemy hands was blown up with nuclear bombs--and right before the explosion, something appeared in the window--was it a face? Was it a human face or an alien face? The bomber pilot was haunted for many episodes with the ghosts or non-ghosts of his actions. Anyway, that’s what my wandering thoughts bring up when the “dark plane” goes by. Do we know who is/was in there? Does TSA have a plan for this? “Passengers die of boredom and dry sinus passages while de-icers sit idle in the tarmac.” “Pilots depressurize rebellious passengers demanding to take off or get off.” “Shroud of ennui offs trapped passengers.” “Even carry on bags desiccated on ‘death flight’.” “Carry-on carrion: Angry passenger empties overhead bins killing all.” We are news at eleven just waiting to happen, man.


Oh, now an iphone user reports that we are under a winter weather advisory. Power to the people. I love that about cell phones and the internet.

Oh, now the pilot has announced that we have been on the plane too long and are going back to the terminal. We are exceeding the 3-hour limit for pickling passengers. But, didn’t they know an hour ago that we would? Who compensates me for my time? Will they give me a rebate? Will they give me a free ticket for another flight? Will they give me a gift certificate for the food court? 

A squirrel plans ahead for winter;
squirrels are good at being mammals

It’s just horrid. I am looking for someone to be really angry at and there’s just no one. The pilot is as much a victim as me. Right now I am leaning toward blaming the airport for not planning ahead for sufficient de-icing equipment. And I blame those who let us even leave the gate when they could have predicted that we would not reach takeoff. I do not blame any supernatural entity for making it snow. It’s our job as mammals to cope with extremes of weather. I just wish the airport had been a better mammal.