Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie Arlington Street Church 3 October, 2010
1 Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie Arlington Street Church 3 October, 2010 Love Dogs One night a man was crying, Allah! Allah! His lips grew sweet with the praising, until a cynic said, “So! I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?” The man had no answer to that. He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw Khidr,1 the guide of souls, in a thick, green foliage. “Why did you stop praising?” [he asked] “Because I've never heard anything back.” [Khidr, the guide of souls, spoke:] This longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union. Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of a dog for its master. That whining is the connection. There are love dogs 1 possibly pronounced KY-derr 2 no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.2 That's our friend Rumi, the13th century Persian Sufi mystic: Give your life to be a love dog. George Thorndike Angell was born in 1823. Perhaps because of a childhood in poverty, he had deep convictions about social change. He was already well known for his fourteen year partnership with the antislavery activist Samuel E. Sewall when, one day in March of 1868, two horses, each carrying two riders over forty miles of rough road, were raced until they both dropped dead. George Angell was appalled. He penned a letter of protest that appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser, “where it caught the attention of Emily Appleton, a prominent Bostonian who deeply loved animals and was already nurturing the first stirrings of an American anticruelty movement.
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