Myths, Journeys and Stories

Thinking about something other than dogs. I am thinking about books I have read and stories I have learned from and what they have meant to me and still mean to me.

Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind, wrote that "Thoughts are things, so we find that different kinds of thoughts become different kinds of things. Thought is always creative: it must always create after its own type. It must always give form to something, and the something to which it gives form is not a thing of itself, because the thought that creates the form is a product of the thinker. The thinker comes first, then the thought, and then the form." And as we read this and others like it, we realize this is how it has always been and we also realize how important our thoughts and stories are.

Holmes wrote that comment about thoughts many years ago, and I find similar thoughts in the writings of Emma Curtis Hopkins, William James, Thomas Merton, Joel Goldsmith, Don Miguel Ruiz, Thomas Troward, Rufus Jones, Howard Thurman, and many many more who have written and talked about the importance of thoughts, creativity and change in every generation.

In the book, Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life through Writing and Storytelling,  Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox in their 1989 update of Telling Your Story (written in 1973), say that "We are storytelling animals" and they, like many of the people above as well as our ancestors and the first people on this earth have all used stories to explain who we are, where we come from, why we exist, why we are different, what is important to us, what we want in life, and much much more. Keen and Valley-Fox go on to say that "To be a person is to have a story to tell."  And what I like the most about what they wrote is something that fits every one of us and all the people who came before us: "With a little imagination," they say, "each person can find within himself a replacement for the myths and stories lost when we ceased living in tribes."

Don't we all know this? Think of the stories we have all been told and that we have all told: all different, some made up from nothing but our own thoughts and experiences, others about people we have known, or have met or who have passed on, or about people who lived long ago and left their stories for us through pictures carved in rocks, stories told by other people throughout history, stories we read in books. . . . and nowadays many come upon their stories through radios, computers, and televisions.

What would life be without people and could people exist without stories?
 Instead of just talking about dogs and all they mean to us, I am going to share some thoughts about stories and writers who have meant a lot to me.

Howard Thurman Dean of Marsh Chapel Boston University 1953 to 1965

Just a note to explain a change in this blog: This blog is no longer just about the dogs in my life.
I have more that I am grateful for, especially for people of the past and people of the present who have positively affected my life. One of the people I want to talk about will be Howard Thurman, a mentor for many people of the 20th century and beyond. As the Dean of the Chapel at Boston University when I was a student, he unknowingly taught me much about life and mysticism and much more. As he said, "There is in every person an inward sea . . ." But before I get to him, I have some other writers that I want to  talk about. . .

Who Was Howard Thurman?

 May 26, 2014

I have been remiss for awhile, quite awhile, I think my last post was in September 2010, but here I am, back again. I just finished teaching a class about a favorite person in my life. The person was Howard Thurman, and he was the Dean of Marsh Chapel when I was a student at Boston University in the 1950s and 60s. He preached incredible sermons that packed the chapel with both BU students and people who lived in that part of Boston.

But he was more than the Dean of Marsh Chapel: Much more. He was a teacher. But not just any teacher. He opened us up to our own worlds and our own lives.

And he wrote. Howard Thurman wrote 22  books, and after he died, several of his books were reprinted.

• The Greatest of These (1944)
• Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (1945) [also published as The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (same year)]
• Meditation for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1948)
• Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)
• Deep is the Hunger: Meditations for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1951)
• Christmas Is the Season of Affirmation (1951)
• Meditations of the Heart (1953)
• The Creative Encounter: An Interpretation of Religion and the Social Witness (1954)
• The Growing Edge (1956)
• Footprints of a Dream: The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (1959)
• Mysticism and the Experience of Love (1961)
• The Inward Journey: Meditations on the Spiritual Quest (1961)
• Temptations of Jesus: Five Sermons Given By Dean Howard Thurman in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, 1962 (1962)
• Disciplines of the Spirit (1963)
• The Luminous Darkness: A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope (1965)
• The Centering Moment (1969)
• The Search for Common Ground (1971)
• The Mood of Christmas (1973)
• A Track to the Water's Edge: The Olive Schreiner Reader (1973)
• The First Footprints (1975)
• With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (1979)

The books that were reprinted posthumously up to 2006 are:

• For the Inward Journey: Writings of Howard Thurman (1984)
• A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience (1998)
• Meditations of the Heart (1999)
• Howard Thurman: Essential Writings (2006)

Who was this man and why should we be interested in him?
I like to let him do the talking: Here is one of his passages, quoted in his book, Meditations of the Heart: "There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the angel with the flaming sword. Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent. This is your crucial link with the Eternal."  (from Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman )

Yes, Thurman was the chaplain of the university I went to and yes, I heard many many of his sermons. But what stands out to me today is that phrase from Meditations of the Heart. He is not about a class to be taught: he is about who we are individually.

It's been awhile since I have posted to this blog, but something came up that made me realize that we cannot always rely on the lists we belong to. Today, there is some turmoil for some people on Yahoo groups. Many are having problems posting to their groups; others are not receiving posts.And still others are discovering that their beautiful easy to read sites are no longer beautiful and no longer easy to read and follow. So what does Yahoo have to say about this?

Yahoo! Feedback: “Sorry! No more suggestions are allowed on this forum.” Over time, we all will not be able to use the Yahoo lists the way we have been using them to stay in touch and to learn more about out Airedales and exchange stories and hope with each other. As it is, I can no longer get main pages for my sites and all the pictures are gone.

To all ADTshowbreeders, ADTnutrition, Training Airedales members: If you are having trouble using the list, as many of us are, bring your interests in showing Airedales to Facebook and use the three new sites on Facebook where we can discuss our Airedales and our adventures with our Airedales: the sites are ADTnutrition, ADTshowbreeders, and TrainingAiredales. Easy to find: just put in the links below for ADTnutrition and for ADTshowbreeders.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/ADTnutrition/290042883244

https://www.facebook.com/ADTshowbreeders

I’m still working on TrainingAiredales, but I think if you just put in TrainingAiredales as a search, you will find the page.

And we can also discuss Airedale issues on http://dearjubilee-joyce.blogspot.com/  -- Just scroll down on a page and put in what you want to say.

Blackie: The Dog That Demonstrated That There Is But One Mind to a Seven Year Old Child

“"This animal hides in your heart."
Chinese saying


In a picture brown with age: I am a toddler in a dress carrying a toy with my dog, the Boston Terrier my godfathers gave me, behind me. I don’t remember the dog or the godfathers. But the picture shows that my connection to dogs goes back to the very beginning of my life.

Later, when I was six or seven, my father brought home a dog named Blackie. At that time, my school was several blocks from home, up a hill, and across several streets. I walked to school. At the big street crossing in front of the school on Federal Street, there was a policeman who told us when to cross and when to stay put.

Until I got to that point, I was on my own. And I was petrified of some boys who lived at the top of my street. Sometimes a friend, much smaller than I was, would come down to my house to walk to school with me. Her name was Gail, and she was fearless; the boys never bothered us when she was with me. But Gail couldn't always be there.

On those days, I left the house with great trepidation, I would set off on my own . . . Blackie followed me. I have no idea how he knew that I needed him. But Blackie would walk behind me all the way to school, stay outside the school grounds, always on the side of the building my classroom was on (and he changed places when my classroom was moved to the other side of the building) – I could always look out the window and see him there, waiting patiently to follow me home at lunch time. Then, he would follow me back to school in the afternoon, and wait to follow me home at the end of the school day.

Blackie knew I was afraid, he knew to stay close to me when I passed the houses of those boys; and he knew where I was in the school building. This did not strike me as odd when I was a child: I just knew I was safe.

As time went by and I lost my fear, Blackie stopped following me to school. But, after school, Blackie and I had many adventures, and I always felt safe with him. To me, this was what a dog did because it was what Blackie did.

But now, looking back more than 60 years, and having lived with many other dogs, I know that there is a deeper connection. Blackie knew I was afraid. He knew where the fear came from. And he didn’t let me go through the fear alone . . . ever. When I lost the fear and was able to stand up for myself, he knew that his  work on that was done.

Blackie actually did more than help me lose my fear. Blackie was the first being to try to teach me about living in the moment. You see, Blackie, like all dogs, lived totally in the moment. He was totally focused on what was happening when it was happening.


After Thought: Several years ago, I wrote an article titled Picture the Behavior and Make It Happen. I never thought of Blackie and me while I was writing it, and I never thought of the deep mind-to-mind mental connection that we all have with animals. Having trained many dogs, I knew that people need to have a clear focused mind when they work with their dog. Even though I was close to knowing that connection is mind to mind, I didn’t phrase it that way. I just knew from my own adult work with dogs that we have to have a clear mind to focus on working with a dog. This story of Blackie reminds me of the real connection, mind to mind, that we have with all life.

 Once again, the USA is turning its interest to the Middle East. This seems to happen whenever there is an upheaval in the middle east. Karl Meyer has written quite a bit on the Middle East This is a very short excerpt from one of his articles.

Karl E. Meyer is a third generation journalist. He received a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Priceton University, and then a PhD in Politics also from Princeton. 

The following is an excerpt from a series he wrote for The World Policy Journal in 2005/2006. In this excerpt, he cites an article that I wrote in the late '70s based on my 1970 dissertation on the French in Syria.

Meyer writes: "Few countries are . . . so compulsively fascinating as Syria. . . . To spend a fortnight in Syria is to span the millennia from the early Bronze Age, sharing routes once traveled by Abraham, continuing through the glory years of the Silk Road, followed by the din of the Crusades, before lurching incongruously into Latakia, the pampered equivalent of Iraq's Tikrit for Syria's ruling Baath Party. The landscape is everywhere strewn with surprises. On a day trip from Aleppo, which together with Damascus lays claim to being the world's oldest continuously inhabited city, we proceeded to the Byzantine basilica honoring St. Simeon Stylites, who dwelled for decades atop a pillar. We then navigated among hundreds of enigmatic Dead Cities, each a barren shell abandoned by early Christians, the result conjecturally of climate change, deforestation, or earthquakes. On returning to Aleppo, we paused in the musty taproom of the Baron Hotel, still much as it was when T. E. Lawrence left an unpaid chit for champagne, or when his royal ally Prince Feisal spoke from the hotel balcony in 1920 to proclaim Syria's independence (prematurely, to be sure, since Feisal was peremptorily deposed by the French, compelling his British patrons to create a new throne in Iraq). . . .

"Nevertheless, in a self-delusory trance," Meyer continues, "the French saw their occupation of the Levant as a success, as measured by improved rail networks, modernized ports, newly built schools and factories, and other indices of presumed progress. Hence the shock in 1925 when a revolt raged through Syria and Lebanon, precipitating the bombardment of the ancient city of Damascus. "When the smoke lifted," writes the Harvard historian Joyce Laverty Miller, in a detailed analysis, "much of Damascus was in ruins; the reported loss of life and property appalled world opinion and galvanized Arab dissidents. A torrent of violent and emotional criticism was unleashed. In some quarters, it was even hinted that the League of Nations would remove [its] mandate from French control." Yet within a year, the insurgency ebbed, and the world's attention moved on.

"According to Miller, writing in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (vol. 8, 1977, pp. 545-63), the roots of the revolt lay in the imposition of an artificial nation-state on Syria's divided groups with their long tradition of self-governance in local affairs under the Ottomans. In her words: "The early French administrators in Syria, in their efforts to develop and modernize a Syrian nation were of necessity inflaming groups which had always mistrusted one another within the Ottoman Empire and had coexisted only because 'the nation,' the empire, was weak. In short, the revolution of 1925 was not the nationalist revolt of a united people against a French oppressor but a power struggle among and within divisive groups in an artificial state who could agree on only one thing: the French must go."
. . . 
"Doubtless much has changed in Syria and Iraq since the 1920s. But one is struck by the persistent tunnel vision among those who presume to know what is best for foreigners whose language they cannot speak and whose customs they cannot comprehend."

I couldn't agree more!

AKC Canine Ambassadors:what they do

As an AKC Canine Ambassador, my Airedales, Neisha and Kate, help me teach children to be safe around dogs. We visit schools, camps, Girl Scout troops, and libraries to teach children about being safe around dogs.

In most parts of the country, there are serious problems with loose dogs, and most of the children that I talk to are afraid of dogs. Some have been chased by these dogs and knocked down. I talk to them about how to be safe around dogs, about never approaching a loose dog, about telling an adult about a loose dog so the adult can call for help for the dog, and what to look for before approaching a dog. Using advice from another Canine Ambassador, I tell the children to be sure they can see a collar attached to a leash held by a person, or more briefly Collar - Leash - Person and I get the children to chant those three words so that they will remember to look for the collar, the leash and the person.

I tell the children that when they see a loose dog coming towards them, they need to stand still and “be a tree.” And I tell them not to stare at the dog, but to look to the side or down at the ground. I tell them about a time when I was a child and two St. Bernards loved to chase me when I rode by on my bicycle. I tell them how I learned to stop, be very still and firmly tell the dogs to "go home!". I tell them how that worked for me and helped me get over my fear of dogs that were not mine.

I demonstrate how to ask permission to pet a dog (as long as it has a collar, leash and person) first with a toy stuffed Airedale and then with my dog. I show them how, after asking permission to pet a dog, to determine if the dog seems happy to be petted by the child. I teach them to make a fist, and let the dog sniff their closed fist, and I teach them how to pet the dog under its chin or on its chest.

Then I let them approach my dog one by one. They are always so cute, and at one visit, a child who had been knocked down by a loose dog was one of the first children to approach us. The dog stands quietly, and lets each child approach her, sniffs their fists, and lets them pet her. When a child forgets to pet under her chin and reaches over to pet her head, the dog's nose does just what I had demonstrated with the stuffed Airedale: she follows their hand with her nose making it impossible for them to pet her head because she is so busy sniffing their hand!

When every child has had an opportunity to pet the dog, we relax with her, usually by sitting on the floor around her with one child at a time stroking her, rubbing her belly, giving her a treat, or just talking to her. The dogs love this part of the visit, and often initiate it by lying down so the children can rub their belly. The children love giving Neisha treats because she has a very soft mouth and they never feel her teeth. My job is to make sure they don’t overdo the treats.

All too soon, our visits are over. I give each child two AKC coloring books, one about safety around dogs and the other about responsible dog ownership, and a bookmark with reminders about caring for a dog. Then we pack up and head home..

All together, each session is a great outing and a great experience. The dog that I take to the session seems to enjoy doing this as much as I do.