Such a stereotypical post . . .

I remember hearing of a children’s book entitled “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. Well, that’s pretty much how Friday started.

Late last week both my better half and I were in the midst of particularly nasty workplace stuff. She’s in the middle of budget season. I’ve got new Federal regulations to implement against lots of institutional resistance with a rapidly-approaching deadline.

Friday morning my wife left me two messages at work. The first one was that Mr. Puppy was obviously not feeling well as he wouldn’t leave her alone and he started crying and whimpering. The second message was that she couldn’t find him. She was afraid that he’d found a quiet place in which to die. She, of course, had to get to work so she couldn’t search him out. It was quite troubling that he wouldn’t come to her when she called, as that’s not his nature. I still wasn’t ready to believe the worst.

Needless to say, I went home at lunchtime. Took nearly twice as long as it should have due to impromptu road construction all along the route.

When I arrived at home, I started by searching the house. It was eerie to enter the house and not be immediately greeted with a wave of puppy enthusiasm. I started by searching the basement, remembering the time he had found his way down and closed the door behind himself. He wasn’t there. I returned upstairs and searched room by room. All his toys were lined up as Catherine leaves them for him in the morning. Usually by mid-day he’d have removed at least one of them. No sign of him in the house at all. So I started methodically outside along the fence, looking to see if there was some hole he might have sneaked through. When I started looking behind the bushes along the east fence, I heard the jingle of dog tags. He’d been between the lilac bushes and the house – a new spot for him as far as I know, but a cool one. He was limping a bit, whimpering, wagging his tail. He was quite dirty. I don’t know that I was ever happier to see him anyway.

I took him inside, got most the dirt off his coat and gave him a little treat with a hidden dose of a veterinary anti-inflammatory agent. I sat with him for a while and petted him. The prodigal pup had returned and I was happy to look past the lameness, whimpering and dirt.

Through that evening and the whole weekend, he was more demanding of our attention than usual – just like I am more demanding of my Master’s attention when I’m in a painful situation that I can’t resolve and more prone to ignore Him when things seem to be going more my way.

Saturday was a real fall day – cool and overcast with a light breeze. As I ran various errands, there was even a bit of drizzle. Catherine had the worst of the day with no end of difficulties in trying to get new lenses properly fitted in her eyeglasses. You’d do well, no matter who you are, to avoid Eyeglass World!


This was one of those weeks where we had decided to attend the anticipated Mass on Saturday. Not many others had made that choice. We sat on the geographic west (liturgical south) side. The sanctuary seemed a bit darker than it had recently, in keeping with the darkness of the day. The nave was dark too, given the dark clothes that most of those present wore. I was in pale gray – a few shades lighter than the sky had been. A strange day here, where the sky had been cloudy all day.

Now most people would regard what came next as nothing more than coincidence. Many would not recount it as it seems melodramatic or, to some, perhaps worse. Right after we prayed “Lord, I am not worthy . . “, the sun broke through the clouds for the first time that day. The nave was flooded with brilliant light. Even my gray shirt looked bright.

At home that evening, the power kept flickering off and on, as it had done some months ago. I did what I did that night (pray ”Visite, Quaesumus Domine”). Instead of roasting a chicken, though, we went to a neighborhood Greek restaurant that’s new to us and had a delightful meal. There were no further problems with electricity, or with Mr. Puppy. We slept the sleep of blessed, for we are so richly blessed