Hail Frieda, Full of Grace

Hail Frieda, Full of Grace

Six years ago today, after a great deal of resistance, I finally followed the advice of several people whose opinions I respect and beganย this blog. I moved it to the Patheos platform a year and a half ago.

Over a half million visits from 180+ countries later, writing here regularly has provided me with more joy and opportunities for growth than I could have possibly imagined. My latest book, published last year, was entirely a product of several years of blogging, as my next book (which I am currently writing), due to be published in Fall 2019, will also be. Thanks so much to my regular and occasional readersโ€“your support and comments keep me going!ย 

For my first blog post six years ago, I chose an essay that I had written at a writerโ€™s conference several years earlier. At that time, I was at the very beginning of a long process in which I have gradually learned over time to move away from the academic writing that I had been producing and publishing for twenty years to a much more intimate and personal (and shorter) style.

On the last evening of that writerโ€™s conference, each of us was required to read something publicly (to around 100 people) that we had written that week. Not surprisingly, I chose to write about someone whom I love and who is close to my heart, undoubtedly the second most important female in my life over the past dozen years. Here is โ€œHail Frieda, Full of Grace,โ€ followed by a few updates at the end.

I have unexpectedly fallen in love with a real bitch. Sheโ€™s cute, with dark brown eyes and medium brown hair. Although I generally prefer long hair on a female, she wears her hair extremely short and it works. She tends to bite me when she gets overexcited while weโ€™re playing, but I still find her pearly white teeth very attractive. Although sheโ€™s willing to allow aย mรฉnage ร  troisย when my wife is home, she prefers it being just the two of us in bed. Her name is Frieda.

This is a new experience for me. No one has ever looked at me with a gaze that says โ€œyou were put on earth just for me.โ€ No female has ever marked me as a love interest and dared me not to love her back. This is the first time Iโ€™ve been chosen before I knew I was even being considered. And itโ€™s not as if Frieda doesnโ€™t have lots of options for love interests. Everybody loves Friedaโ€”sheโ€™s extroverted and assertive, yet can be warm, demure, and submissive. She can take over a room just by walking into it, yet is happy to spend hours being quiet doing whatever youโ€™re doing. She is fluent in both English and German. Her profile would be a killer onย eharmony.com.

I never thought Iโ€™d fall in love with a dog. Iโ€™ve always been a cat person; thereโ€™s been at least one cat in my life consistently ever since I was ten years old. A cat is a perfect pet for an introvert; they clearly would prefer to be left alone most of the time and will only socialize when it is their idea. Thereโ€™s something edgy about even the most domesticated of cats, as if it just crossed the line from its wild ancestors and might cross back at a momentโ€™s notice. It takes time and effort to get to know a catโ€”time and effort on the humanโ€™s part, that is. The cat couldnโ€™t care less. Self-reliance, independence, confidence, a sense of mystery and aloofnessโ€”I find much to admire in a cat.

Dogs are a different story; not so much to admire. Dogs are so obsequious, as if canine completeness requires human approval.. But Frieda didnโ€™t and doesnโ€™tย needย meโ€”sheย choseย me, out of the blue. Frieda is part of the four animal menagerie who arrived when my son and daughter-in-law moved in, joining the two geriatric animals already in the house; she decided early on that I was going to be hers. Iโ€™ve seen animals attach themselves to a single human before (usually my wife, a dog person). Not to me, though. So the โ€œclick click clickโ€ of toenails behind me everywhere I go, an enthusiasm when I come home so over the top that I worry about her health, having a canine jammed in next to me everywhere I sit, a 10 ยฝ pound dachshund trying to spoon with me in bedโ€”these are new and sometimes disconcerting experiences.

I once saw a bumper sticker that said โ€œI want to be the person that my dog thinks I am.โ€ Not meโ€”thatโ€™s too much pressure. No human being could possibly deserve the rapturous upside-down look Frieda occasionally gives me when sheโ€™s laying next to me or on my lap, just making sure that Iโ€™m still there.ย Of course such reverence is easy for Friedaโ€”she doesnโ€™t know about all the ways in which I am unworthy of unconditional love. Thatโ€™s one of my great fearsโ€”what if they (my wife, my sons, my friends, my studentsโ€”anybody) knew the truth about me? Frieda doesnโ€™t know the truth about me, and thatโ€™s why sheโ€™s attached to me at the hip. She doesnโ€™t know any better.

I learned as a kid in Sunday School that grace is โ€œunmerited favor.โ€ Divine grace is something I donโ€™t deserve, a gift I cannot earn, bestowed simply โ€œbecause.โ€ Over the years, grace has evolved for me into โ€œGod knows that youโ€™re a shit and a loser, but chooses to forgive you and to love you anyway.โ€ Today Iโ€™m thinking that grace is more like Frieda. The miracle of grace is not that โ€œyou are unworthy but I choose to treat you as if you are worthy,โ€ but โ€œyou are worthy.โ€ Not โ€œI love you in spite of,โ€ or โ€œI love you because of,โ€ but โ€œI love you.โ€ If there is, somewhere in the universe, a transcendent grace and love like that, I am in awe.ย  Thatโ€™s something worth believing and having faith in. Thatโ€™s a thread of possibility that should be followed in order to see where it leads. Of course, Friedaโ€™s just a simple dog and doesnโ€™tย realize that her standards are ridiculously low. But as Leonard Bernstein wrote inย Mass, โ€œSing like you like to sing/God loves all simple things/For God is the simplest of all.โ€

Frieda is still with us; she just turned fourteen this month and is still going strong (although she is racking up some serious vet bills). Sheโ€™s closer to thirteen pounds than-ten-and-a-half and would probably weigh twice that if allowed to eat as much and as often as she would like. For my sixtieth birthday two years ago, my tattoo-artist son Caleb permanently inscribed Frieda on my left arm, so now she REALLY goes wherever I go.ย 

Iโ€™ve learned a good deal about grace, about self-worth, and (I think) about God since I first wrote this essay eleven years ago, but Iโ€™m still in awe of the multiple and unexpected ways in which the divine breaks through on a daily basis. Frieda has been, and continues to be, a vehicle of that grace on a regular basis.


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