Forgiveness, My Dog, and Me, Part 1
This blog post is inspired by the podcast, “Miracle Voices,” which has 34 episodes to date. The purpose of the podcast is to share stories of forgiveness based on integrating the principles of A Course in Miracles. “Miracle Voices” was the brainchild of Judith Skutch Whitson, who was one of the first people to read A Course in Miracles when it was still a manuscript, and one of the first students of the Course. She co-founded the Foundation for Inner Peace, which is the publisher of the Course chosen by Drs. Helen Schucman and William Thetford, co-scribes of the Course. “Judy,” as she was affectionately known by everyone, passed away peacefully on October 19th, 2021. She was 90 years old. Matthew McCabe co-hosted “Miracle Voices” with Judy, and will continue to co-host the podcast with Judy’s daughter, Tamara Morgan, the co-president of the Foundation for Inner Peace. I think of “Miracle Voices” as a loving parting gift from Judy and my aim in writing this post and the next one is to capture some of the spirit of the podcast and Course-style forgiveness in general.
Let me tell you a forgiveness story. Before I get to the dramatic part, I have to tell you some background information about my dog, Wall-E, who is the catalyst in this story, as well as about male dog toileting habits in general. Wall-E developed lameness in late January of this year. For many months, we didn’t know if he had torn a ligament and would need surgery. We had to completely change his exercise routine, limiting walks to half the time and distance. Wall-E had to live with quite a bit of pain for a while because the most effective pain medication made him sick. All of this has been its own forgiveness story, but it’s not the one I’m telling today. We eventually found an amazing veterinary physical therapy practice that made a huge difference in all of our lives, and Wall-E has gotten a lot better. Even so, to this day, we cannot go as far afield on our walks as we used to do because longer walks can make Wall-E’s lameness worse. We generally let Wall-E choose the route because walks are the highlight of his day. At the time of this story, his walks still had to be kept quite short due to his lameness and pain. This meant that we frequently walked up and down the streets close to our home. With so many people in our neighborhood at home due to COVID restrictions, our daily morning walks drew the eyes of those neighbors sitting at their windows as we passed.
As you may know if you have ever walked a dog, many dogs urinate (or “pee” or “go potty”) to mark their territories, especially male dogs. They pointedly don’t go potty on their own home territory but save up their pee to distribute around the neighborhood. In our neighborhood, there are dozens and dozens of dogs, and also plenty of skunks and raccoons, as well as the occasional coyote. One night we even spotted a raccoon right on our front porch, explaining part of the fascination Wall-E has for doing “perimeter checks” around our yard. Meanwhile, as we walk around our neighborhood, what draws Wall-E to pee on a particular spot is no deep mystery: some other dog has peed there or there is the smell of a wild animal on that spot. Dogs have a very well-developed sense of smell, and the pee of other dogs and wild animals is like a beacon for them. Unlike “number 2” (i.e., defecating), there is not a lot to be done when a dog pees, and pulling a 75 lb dog away from where he is sniffing with great interest is not an easy task. Some months before the start of this forgiveness story, an older man who apparently keeps watch for dog owners whose dogs pee on his property, told Matthias and I off rather forcefully. We refer to him as the böse Mann. In German, which is Matthias’s native language, this means, “the angry man.”
And now for the story. Since this spring, I have been walking Wall-E on my own most weekday mornings because Matthias no longer works from home and has to show up at his job at a reasonable time. The smells of Far Side Street—what I will call the street the böse Mann lives on—regularly drew Wall-E very strongly and we admittedly walked that street quite often together. Perhaps because of this repetition and no sightings of the böse Mann, I actually forgot about him. That morning, I was listening to a workshop by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, which I often do to help me remember and integrate the principles of A Course in Miracles. Because I was concentrating on Ken as I walked up Far Side Street, I didn’t immediately notice the böse Mann, who had come striding out of his house towards me, determined to get my attention. When I spotted him, I took out my ear buds to be polite, but I had already recognized him, and I knew in that instant that he was not seeking my attention for a friendly chat. The böse Mann said that he wanted to talk to me about my dog. Before he could say another word, I blurted out rather shortly, “We have already had this conversation!” To this, the böse Mann replied, with some exasperation, “Well, then, why are you still walking your dog on my street and letting him pee on my property?!” And off we went.
The disagreement that followed was really quite pointless. In the world of form, we are two people with different outlooks, a man who doesn’t want dogs urinating on his yard and a woman who has to walk her dog short distances in the neighborhood because of his lameness and need to relieve himself. Here is a flavor of this no-win exchange:
Him: “Your dog peed in my yard!”
Me: “No he didn’t! He was only on your driveway briefly. He didn’t even go into your yard!”
Him: “Why don’t you take your dog up to the school instead of walking him on our street?” (There is a school at the end of Far Side Street with a large open field behind it. Not only was the field off-limits at the time of this exchange due to school being in session, but the gate has been locked to the public for over 18 months due to the pandemic. This has also been a forgiveness opportunity!)
Me: “These are public streets; you don’t own the side-walk!”
Him: “Well, but you and other dog owners shouldn’t let your dogs pee on my property!”
Me: “There’s no ordinance about dog pee; only dog poop. Look (holding up bag of poop), I scoop my dog’s poop!”
You get the idea. The exchange clearly become louder and louder because soon a neighbor one house up from the böse Mann’s opened her door and stepped out onto her front steps to observe. (Her nods in support of the böse Mann’s points about the “disrespect” of dog owners who let their dogs pee on people’s lawns and his telling me to walk my dog elsewhere, only added fuel to my anger!) It is not my proudest moment, but I really went head-to-head with this man, and neither of us backed down at first. I cannot remember the last time I have had this sort of heated argument with anyone, especially a stranger. There are many reasons not to lose my temper with people, valuing peace being foremost among them, but there is also the harsh reality of living in the United States where plenty of people own guns. The böse Mann’s thinly-veiled hostility and—from my perspective—aggression in buttonholing me while I was (I thought) minding my own business, sparked a threat response in me. Out of a sense of self-preservation, I fought back, gun violence be damned. When I talk in my posts about the viciousness of the ego thought system, this is what I am talking about. As A Course in Miracles says about our mistaken conception of ourselves, the ego thought system operates on the principle, “kill or be killed” (M-17.7:11).
Once my ire is raised, I don’t easily pull back. I was squarely in my ego mind during this argument with the böse Mann and I certainly didn’t want to concede to him. Yet, after some moments, a part of me was able to recognize that I had escalated in anger. Having practiced changing my mind about how I see situations in the world for years, I was able to start remembering the need to return to a peaceful state. I knew, however dimly, just as the Course teaches, that I was not helpless. Despite the strong pull to continue arguing, I realized I had to find a way to disengage from the interaction. To help myself do this, I said out loud—as much to myself as to the böse Mann—that I needed to calm down. In that moment, the thought came to me of my psychotherapy clients who depend on me to help them with their distress. I recognized fully that I could not help them when we met later that morning if I could not get my anger to pipe down. The böse Mann had told me that he had all day to watch his home for errant dog owners since he was retired, but I told him that I had to get to work. I added that I work with people who need my help and I can’t afford to be angry. These spoken words redirected me, and I was able to take off with Wall-E.
On the walk back home, I was almost immediately struck by the irony of listening to Ken Wapnick’s words right before this deeply unsettling experience. Clearly, even if I am in the middle of listening to one of the greatest teachers of A Course in Miracles, I can lose my temper in a heartbeat! The Course explains why this is so in many places. For example, “²The ego always speaks first. ³It is capricious and does not mean its maker well” (T-6.IV.1:2-3). Ken would be the first to say that what happened the instant I spotted the böse Mann trying to get my attention is that I became afraid of love. A Course in Miracles teaches that there are only two emotions, love and fear, and of these, only love is real. There is no sin in being afraid of love. As the Course reassures us, “⁷Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear” (T-21.II.2:7). Love is what we all are in truth, despite believing ourselves to be bodies. Nothing we say or do—including bellowing out rebuttals to a neighbor’s points about dog-walking—can change that. My reality and the so-called böse Mann’s reality are one and the same, namely eternal Love. The Course uses the word “brother” 876 times; clearly, we need many reminders that those around us are not our enemies but as close to us as our beloved siblings. With this in mind, for the remainder of the story, I will refer to this particular neighbor as, “my brother.”
It took me several weeks to work through the anger evoked by this exchange with my brother. I wasn’t upset all day every day. Instead, I vacillated back and forth between peace and anger. Since I walked past Far Side Street almost daily, I had a nagging reminder of the unpleasant exchange, along with the almost-daily decision to steer Wall-E clear of the street. I want peace, and if I can’t be certain that my dog will simply walk past my brother’s property with the Vegas-sized, olfactory, “Sniff Here!” sign, there is no wisdom in continuing to walk along his street. I practiced this line of thinking on several crossings past Far Side Street until it became automatic and no longer evoked anger or frustration.
Since the anger kept returning, albeit with less force each time, I also used other lines of thinking inspired by the Course, such as the idea of not condemning my brother in my mind (as being wrong, etc.) and not taking the bait of considering myself to be unfairly treated. There are dozens of passages in A Course in Miracles which are relevant to situations of conflict, like this one. The whole Course is about forgiveness, especially of our relationships with others. For example, these words from Chapter 23 spoke to me:
³There is nothing you could attack that is not part of you. ⁴And by attacking it you make two illusions of yourself, in conflict with each other. ⁵And this occurs whenever you look on anything that God created with anything but love. ⁶Conflict is fearful, for it is the birth of fear. ⁷Yet what is born of nothing cannot win reality through battle. ⁸Why would you fill your world with conflicts with yourself? ⁹Let all this madness be undone for you, and turn in peace to the remembrance of God, still shining in your quiet mind (T-23.I.8:3-9).
This passage helped remind me that all I am doing in being angry at my brother is attacking myself. By wishing to let go of my grievance and asking for help from the Holy Spirit (i.e., my inner Guide) again and again, I felt increasingly peaceful about my brother day by day.
I’m not sure why this particular experience with my brother had so much “charge” and took so many iterations from anger to peace and back again. Perhaps it was a lightning rod for the whole unhappy situation with Wall-E’s pain and lameness and the implications for me as his primary caretaker. That is what is closest to my awareness. At the same time, A Course in Miracles teaches that the entire universe of space and time is a projection of unconscious guilt at the thought that we attacked God and deserve to be punished. With such a vast reservoir of collective guilt in “action,” my own mind certainly has its own sizable quantity. Any upset can tap into this guilt and bring it to the surface. The form doesn’t matter because the cause of the guilt is lost in time and awareness. Whenever strong emotion arises, it is an opportunity to forgive the specific situation, including all the players and the play-by-play itself. Once forgiven—which is essentially the complete understanding and acceptance that nothing really happened—the guilt is gone for good. Several weeks after the exchange with my brother, I felt that I had come pretty close to complete forgiveness. Little did I know that there was more to forgive! Three or four months later, something else happened involving my dog and me. In my next post, I will tell that forgiveness story and how it relates to this one.
A Course in Miracles is published by The Foundation for Inner Peace. All the books comprising the Course, along with the supplemental pamphlets, are now found online:
https://acim.org/acim/en
All quotations of A Course in Miracles in this blog post are drawn from this version of the Course.
To learn more about “Miracle Voices” and listen to some episodes, visit https://www.MiracleVoices.org.