In What We Trust (4)

[RiverNotch]

The best lines are the first three lines. The contrasts between "bear" and "dog", "bear" and "shepherd", "black" and "white" -- its sharp, the choice of images appropriately Biblical. After that, it needs some distillation -- "clearing" without the unnecessary "between the woods", autumn as confirmation rather than introduction, and so on.

Good ole Buck was a bear
of a dog, an all black shepherd
with a small white tie on his chest.
We sat on the porch
of my brother's house, one night, and he gazed
with pointed ears at something
I couldn't quite see,
something in the clearing, with the last
of the crickets and the dusky
richness of the first fallen leaves.
It was autumn. His gentle eyes
reflected the crescent moon.

The lines disposed of in the above attempt at revision: Buck was listening to the crickets, he was smelling the leaves, and this poem reflects as much on the scene as it does on him, so unless the speaker is deaf and had no sense of smell, then surely they would have heard and smelled what Buck heard and smelled too, right? And what Buck was really asking about was what the speaker couldn't see, but what Buck supposedly could? At any rate, those lines I feel were kinda unnecessary -- aside from repeating what's already been stated, that Buck seems to perceive things out of the speaker's perception, the image of the moon (and even the smile and Buck's questions) is a transition to the second half to be confident in. 

And it does seem to be a matter of confidence that makes the second half quite prosaic. I gravitate towards Tiger's idea that the lines he bracketed are a form of, er, "authorial intrusion", whose idea is already very strongly implied by the next set of lines.

Hands in branches, faces in clouds,
Jesus in toast -- my God, are we really
made in your image, or you, in our imagination?
But we are not what this is about.

Two asides, one light-hearted, one less so. Wasn't it a piece of toast that was famous? Also, I don't quite understand what the phrases "or you, in our imagination" means in that line, but I figure it's important: may you explain it to me?

And after that, it's still kinda prosaic, but with enough drama to really tie things together.

It's about an animal, just a simple dog,
yet so attuned to something
I'm not sure I believe in.
Perhaps you think I'm foolish,
I'm disrespectful, I'm confused,
but I'm certain of that night
on the porch of my brother's house,
the porch across the brambles
where we buried good ole Buck
nearly forty years ago.

---

Lovely work, but on my first few readings I didn't like it, as the second half being so prosaic really did distract from its quality. "anthropocentric" really took me out of it. xD I guess now there's the matter of content, which I feel compelled to respond to.

Image and Likeness are different things, in this sense -- Image is rationality and freedom, while Likeness is assimilation to God through virtue, according to St. John of Damascus. Evidently Image, whose Greek word is Icon, is fundamental to the faith, as it seems to imply that we are the point of contact between God and creation. God spoke to a man in Sinai, and God is a man through Jesus Christ.

It might have been intended by God, but it could also be seen as highlighting our responsibility over ourselves. That we are made in God's Image might just means that how we see ourselves is different from how we see everything else, in a way that makes us have to own up to everything we do, if not as individuals then as a collective. Which, I think, doesn't make it narcissistic in the way the word "anthropocentric" implies: after all, even in orthodox Christianity humans are still creatures, just like animals (and plants, and minerals, and stars -- basically all matter) are, and even the most animist beliefs have this sort-of baked-in distinction between humans and everything else.

In other words, being in God's Image might just testify to one of the differences between humans and animals, which is not so much that we have souls or that we are fundamentally better than them, but that we perceive ourselves and God in a way that's distinct from everything else, in a way that implies responsibility. Apparently the Church says nothing about animals having souls, so it could very well be that they are as immortal us when it comes to the world to come, but what it does say (or at least imply) is that, if this immortality is real, then it's dependent on the redemption and sanctification given us by Jesus Christ, just as sin and sickness and death was brought here by Adam and Eve. That is to say, for things to get better for the animals (and plants, and minerals -- basically for all creation), things have to get better for us, or rather we ourselves have to get better.

Which I think is a kind of unhelpful-in-its-obviousness default for all of our relationships. "Can't give love without loving yourself", "Can't save someone without saving yourself", and so on and so forth, and of course "loving yourself" and "saving yourself" is kinda spiritual, meaning it doesn't preclude and in fact it often encourages self-sacrifice, but it's not arrogant. Of course, it's kinda sad when a pastor crushes a child even more when, after the death of their pet, the pastor bluntly states that the pet, unlike the child, has no soul, and it's absolutely infuriating when people use our being created in the Image of God as an excuse for needlessly slaughtering animals or destroying the environment, but alas, that's the way we sinners go.