Please bear with me, my friends.  I have an important point to make here, but a lengthy prelude is required to get there.  I hope you find it worth the time.

 I don’t speak often of my religious faith or beliefs.  They are private and personal to me:deeply held and valued, but private and my own.  Like my political principles, I prefer not to share them unless they are threatened, or unless I feel that I and my fellow believers are unfairly maligned.  And occasionally I will speak of my faith when I believe that my ‘co-religionists’ are misbehaving or just plain wrong.

 I was raised in a very small Presbyterian church, in a rural Texas community in which everybody was assumed to be Christian, with little distinguishing our denominational choices other than hymn preferences and dinner-on-the-ground BBQ recipes.  During my college years I learned of and became fascinated by other religions and ways of interpreting our spiritual nature.  I can’t say that I overtly abandoned Christianity, but I certainly laid it aside.  Of special attraction was Zen Buddhism, which lead me to spend two years studying the Japanese language – only my penury keeping from a semester in Japan – and whose influence I flouted openly, to the mild and patient dismay of my parents.

 For many years after that I simply disregarded the faith of my youth.  Christianity seemed worn out, plain, provincial – all the things I hoped to leave behind once I was free to live in the world beyond my insular boyhood.  A few months after finishing college I began working on ocean-going ships, visiting and learning of other countries and peoples.  A far vaster world opened to me than I ever imagined existed.

 For many years I floated around – professionally and spiritually – feeling no compunction to believe in anything in particular.  But for reasons I no longer remember, I began reading the Bible again in my 40s.  (Not coincidentally, the same time I began re-evaluating my leftist political beliefs.)  I came back to it with suspicion and doubt, but I remember thinking that I was ready to examine my inherited faith on new terms, to see if there was any value it; if I couldn’t find any, I could comfortably set it aside forever.  I wasn’t searching for anything; I read with an exegetical scrutiny, not a longing to fill some kind of spiritual void.  And I quite expected to be disappointed.

 I began with the New Testament.  Matthew in the lead-off spot, the scholarly chronicler.  Sure, the Sermon on the Mount seemed admirable – what’s not to agree with there?  But nothing particularly moved me. 

 Then I came to Matthew, chapter 22.  There we are told that Jesus was asked by a young man to declare what is “the most important commandment” of all.  Exactly what I wanted to know!  What the heck is God like, and what does a god really want from us?  Distill everything down to it’s most germane essence.  And Jesus answered with these two astonishingly profound and simple instructions:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind…” and “love others as much as you love yourself.” 

 That was it.  No other nuances or caveats.  When Jesus was cornered into nailing it all down – kind of a Christianity for Dummies nutshell – he said nothing about sacrifices, worship practices, sects or observances; nothing about diet or witnessing, nothing about race or creed or sex or righteousness or sinfulness; nothing about chosen people or outcast people; nothing, even, about right or wrong.  Two things, and two things only, did God hope from us: to love God and to love others. 

 I was struck by that passage as I have never before or since been struck by anything I’ve read.  If I could believe that a God existed, and if I could imagine anything that a God would hope for from us, this would be it.  I could not believe in anything more true to the spirit of a divine and perfect being than such a desire.  And I remember thinking that that is the only kind of God who would bother to put up with us, and the only kind I would hope to live with and put my faith in.

 That began a slow and cautious return to my own peculiar Christian faith.  I knew that I could believe in someone who said such a thing; that I could hope to be made better by following someone who said such a thing.  But I returned to it this time without influence, without church or pastor, without creed or denomination.  I didn’t then, nor do I now attend a church.  I don’t read religious books, and I care not a whit for the interpretations of others.  I am what I call a “red letter” Christian, after the old practice of highlighting the words of Jesus in red text, to distinguish them from what others have to say.

 So why do I write this?  Why would I share all this, since the subject itself is one I keep carefully to myself and which I find mildly embarrassing to share?

 I do so for a dear friend, whose child is sexually evolving and who may sometimes think that Christians will condemn this child she loves and who is struggling herself to understand.  To let her know that most of us are not that way.  We will love her and her child without reservation.  If we are true to the person who founded our faith, we must be true to what he said and what he asked of us.

 We must remember this: Jesus said “love others as much as you love yourself.”  Period.  He did not say to love other straight people, or other Christians, or others of your own race or faith or behavior or social class.  He tacked on no caveats, no disclaimers, no exceptions, no exclusions.  God excludes no one from His love.  If He does not, how dare we?

 I understand that other passages in the Bible condemn or disparage homosexuality or ‘alternate’ behaviors or choices we make (I don’t know what they are, and I don’t care).  They were not said by Jesus.  That is the point I was trying to make about being a “red letter” Christian.  Anything I read or am told that contradicts what Jesus said, I cannot hold to be true.  If the apostle Paul or anybody else said something else…well, as I once wrote about gay marriage, I am a Christian, not a Paulian.  (I am also a civil libertarian, but that’s a story for another day…)

 When I read or hear someone – Christian or not– who condemns others for any reason – for being gay, for being of a different race, even for being other than a Christian – I recoil in pain and sadness.  One joy of following Christ is having been given the clearest, most direct and precise guide for how God hopes we shall treat others – all living beings, poor and ornery as ourselves.  We disobey those instructions at the peril of disappointing God.

 I do not know how else to believe.  I don’t claim to live up to my beliefs very often, to what Christ asked of us – I am a deeply and habitually flawed man in an abundance of ways – but I still hold them up as what I hope to be.  I have never found anything more true, or more worthy of clinging to as truth than what Jesus said in those two simple sentences.  And I most passionately hope all other Christians believe the same.

This evening blesses me with an abundance of pleasures: a chill wind that brought back welcome winter weather after too many warm days; a fine Islay Scotch in hand; a productive week brought to a close; an abundance of cats lounging around me; a good book and a call from an old friend; white pelicans bobbing on a white-capped bay; Corelli cantatas on the stereo.

I should be speechless with joy.  Instead, I am sad to my bones.  Over a nameless puppy I knew for no more than ten minutes.

This afternoon I took Gummy to the vet for the sedation and cleansing (euphemism for enema) her own afflictions occasionally require.  I sit with her while she comes to, to calm the confusion and fear that come from waking groggily in a strange, antiseptic place.  In the room with us was a small black Labrador puppy enclosed in a glass box to which an oxygen bottle and tube were attached.  Alone and caged, she gasped for air with rapid breaths.

Pneumonia, my vet told me.  Probably a complication from “kennel cough” contracted while she was held in a local shelter.  He opened the box and let me hold and pet her for a few minutes.  For that brief time, the little girl was ecstatic with joy and relief.  But she couldn’t stay out for long.

My vet is gifted and dedicated to his calling.  He has done and will do all that can be done for the puppy.  When I asked him what chances he gave for the dog to live, he paused and said…maybe 20%.  I was shocked.  To live or to die, I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood.  To live, he answered.

She has not left my thoughts since.  She has colored my whole evening with an uncharacteristic blue swath.  I am puzzled at myself.  She is just another dog, one of countless millions who are and have been born, to live happily or in misery, are loved or live a loveless life, who will die and be remembered or will pass without notice.  Isn’t she just another creature, another biomass destined for the same end we are all bound for?  She may be dead now, for all I know, or perhaps will be by morning.

What does she matter to me?  I am a rancher’s kid; I can’t begin to count the animals I’ve known which have died.  Just this past Christmas morning my stepfather and I had to euthanize a sick 8-day-old calf – on Christmas morning, for God’s sake!

As I grow older myself, life in all its shapes and forms seems more precious and valuable.  Now 62, I know my own death draws closer with each day.  It is real to me now as it never was when I was a young man.  Though I have worked through days and years that were less than happy or secure, I would not wish away a single one of them.  And I would not wish for any living creature to have less.

Certainly not a puppy who has known only a few months of love and kindness – of life! – when it should have years.

I don’t know what else to say about that.  There is little chance of a happy ending, and no platitude can assuage or brighten that fact.  There is no saccharine “rainbow bridge” for this little girl.

Goodbye, my sweet passing little friend.  It makes no difference at all to you, but you will not be forgotten soon.  I’m grieving for you even now, on an otherwise magical night.  That’s no consolation for any goddamn thing at all, but helpless and foolish as I am, it’s all I have.

Now into the 8,760^th – and final – hour of 2018, I find myself bewilderingly content.  The house is warm and soft, lit only by Christmas lights; Vivaldi’s “Gloria” plays on the stereo; I’m sipping a fine 16-year-old Scotch; the bay is glassy still under a windless sky; my oldest girl cat, Jenny, sleeps in my lap (I press my face into her coat and am calmed by her soft roar), while her seven adopted brothers and sisters doze nearby – their peace comforts me.

I’ve spent much of the evening preparing the New Year feast – sorting black-eye peas, dicing cabbage and corned beef, mixing cornbread ingredients – and finishing the eccentric tasks that I perform each year-end.  Most of all, my thoughts scan back over the year, searching for moments when I spoke and behaved honorably and kindly.  I remember a few such moments, and from them I take hope.

But many more are the moments when I spoke angrily without cause, or acted peevishly with little reason.  When, despite comforts and blessings far beyond anything I have deserved, I was ornery and thoughtless; when I could have spoken a kind word but did not; when I could have thought of others before myself, but did not; when a cold midwinter wind chilled my spirit.

Regrets wash over me like a long summer shower.  And I am glad for each of them.  I reject the pop-psychology proposal of having no regrets.   Regrets straighten us; if we attend to them, we may yet be better.

And that is all I hope for the year that just this minute began: that I am better.  That come this night a year from now, I will scan the closing year and find that I was, in the balance, a bit more kind and thoughtful – a far cry from all I should be, but nearer than before.

Blessings on you, my friends, in the year ahead.

Look closely at this photo.  There is nothing remarkable about it, is there?  A tree or two, unkempt streets, and a tiny stream so marginal that it seems to scarcely exist.

Poor and unremarkable as it may be, that is the place where I spent countless happy hours of my boyhood, in Rockdale, Texas.  It was a favorite summer destination for my brothers and pals.  Our bikes took us there – and many other places in town and miles into the country – carrying nothing more than cotton twine, slices of bologna and a coffee can, sometimes a book.  With pieces of bologna tied to the twine, we coaxed crawdads to the surface, where we scooped them up with the coffee can.  (We took them home and dumped them in the hand-made goldfish pond our mother and we had spent weeks building, muddying it up considerably.)  Nothing else lived in or around that still, muddy water, except a few snakes and lizards; unless a rain had fallen recently, the little creek didn’t even flow.

Sometimes we stomped around in the water and mud; sometimes we lay under the tree – the one in the photo is probably the same one that shaded us – and read books which always featured cowboys, football heroes, bold adventurers.  Sometimes we walked a few blocks north to the old minnow farm, to watch the shimmering mass of fish in numbers we couldn’t imagine.  We spent entire days there, being free to roam the summer hours under only one command: pedal home by dark.

This tiny stream has a name: Ham Branch.  Brother Rush sent the photo to me today.  Searching it, I can’t see a single thing that has changed in 50 years.  How can such a meager, unadorned place pull so mightily on my heart?  It is a place most people would pass without thought or notice.

Now imagine how simple and innocent is the life of a child who chooses that place as a favorite spot to spend summer days.  Muddy, dirty water (often stagnant in summer), weeds and snakes (real or imagined), crawdads….but we looked forward to hopping on our bikes and riding there to hang out for hours, with nothing more than a single shade tree, string and bologna and a coffee can, a book or two, and imaginations.

I wouldn’t trade it for all the rides in Disneyland…