An aptitude for desirable discovery

I am bringing a dog to the theater for the production of Annie, but not in the coveted role of Sandy. The dog will instead be begging for money.  When the lady in charge of finding the canine star for Annie received my photos of Lucky, she also noticed my signature on the bottom of my email of hollowcreekfarm.org .  She went to their website, being an animal lover herself, and was awed by their work and their incredible success in saving thousands of animals. She asked if I might want to come to the running of Annie and set up a booth, free of charge, to promote HCF.  You all know that old saying, "Don't look a gift dog in the mouth." This is because many dogs do not have adequate dental care due to the extortionist rates charged to clean their teeth and the breath of a gift dog, or really any dog, could impair the nostril's ability to intake oxygen for decades. The other less literal meaning is when opportunity knocks, open the door.

So I will drive 100 miles in one day (I was a little disturbed when I mapquested the route to theater and HCF.... that far... really?....I ought to check out these kind of details before I make commitments.....) to pick up the dog from HCF that will be the canine ambassador and then hop skip back to the theater. The dog will spend the night with us and then we will go to the Sunday show as well.  I have no idea if we will receive any donations or volunteers or adopters by sitting in the theater lobby with the canine ambassador and a jar and a prayer. But it seemed too large a serendipity to pass up. Serendipity is my favorite word in the whole wide world. I would use it more but some people only know of definition #2 which I don't believe in, as opposed to definition #1.

–noun

1.

an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.

2.

good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.

Serendipity is a relative newcomer in the English lexicon, though not as recent as "yomomma" or "google". It was used to describe the characteristics of the heroes of the 1754 Persian fairytale The Three Princes of Serendip by Horace Walpole,  in which the heroes possess this gift.

I do believe in an aptitude for serendipity, but I do not believe in luck. I don't think it was lucky at all that the theater manager loved dogs, asked for dogs for the role of Sandy, rejected my dog Lucky but saw my email tag for hollowcreekfarm.org and offered us a forum for donations/adoptions.  HCF has begun a new program, Northbound Hounds, where doomed dogs from southern "humane" societies about to be gassed are snatched away in the nick of time and ferried north where for some reason, it is easier to find them homes. Maybe they are so cold in the North that they need more dogs to snuggle with.

It is a wonderful program that has saved 25 dogs in just the past few weeks, but the funds for vetting, cleaning, innoculating, and prepping the dogs for their forever home has to come from somewhere.


So our canine ambassador will be Walter. I have written about him before. He is the big lovable dog with the cerebellar abnormality that makes him move like a bowl of jello. He is a gentle and lovable bowl of jello though and even if he doesn't raise a single donation, it will be a nice day for the dog who never met a person he didn't love and want to wrap his big clumsy paws around.


And since I don't believe in luck but instead believe that all things have a purpose and direction and are guided by an invisible hand, I suspect something very unexpected will happen at the theater Saturday night. Something too wonderful for me to imagine. I might not see it that night... or even in this life.... but I know that it will manifest itself in some remarkable way.  As we speak, I am sure angels are whispering in Walter's ears giving him instructions.


2 Corinthians 4:18
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Hidden Worth

We are furiously packing and preparing for both Matt's graduation and then the DI Global Finals. We will be spectacularly leap-frogging from one to the other. I always plan to fit 10 days of everything I need in one small suitcase, and somehow I can never pack less than ten large suitcases. And then of course there are the last minute things that we will think of and we need backpacks for those few things... and before I know it, there is no longer any room in the van for us.

But I was cleaning a rather old and nasty backpack out to give me just one more thing to pack those few trillion last minute items in.... and had to dump our fishing gear out of it.
It is always astonishing to find what collects in old backpacks. This one had 3 year old snacks, a collapsible bowl in case we ever caught a fish and wanted to watch it swim before we let it go, 50 different lures, none of which have ever fooled one single fish, sinks and bobbers, which people who know how to fish have told me I attach incorrectly, several broken but once lovely shells, two collapsible fishing poles which are about the cutest little things you have ever seen, bandaids for the inevitable hook in some fleshy section of the body, neosporin for the inevitable carnage of ripping hooks from fleshy sections of the body, several napkins, needle nose pliers (for crushing barb against hook so we don't hurt the fish), and ( this next one flummoxed even me) bicycle gloves. I am not quite sure why I had bicycle gloves in my fishing backpack.

After dumping all the fishing stuff in a different container so I could clean the backpack, I turned it inside out so I could scrub the inside. There was a "ping" on the counter top and out of the bowels of the empty backpack, a little diamond earring plinked out. I blinked at the sparkling gem. Now where had that come from and why was it in my fishing kit? I examined it closely. It looked like about a half carat, and it sparkled like it was brand new. It certainly looked real. I have always wanted diamond earrings but no one has ever taken the hint and gotten me any. I don't have a huge materialistic streak, but I do think diamond earrings are beautiful. However, I am not sure what I can do with just one diamond earring. I do intend to take it to a jeweler and either be laughed out of the store for asking the value of a cubic zirconium, or perhaps being escorted to a velvet chair and served Perrier while the jeweler staggers at the value of the perfect diamond. If it is a real diamond, I will ask what it would cost to have a matching earring made, or maybe I will make it into a necklace.....or maybe I will trade it in for the prize behind door #2. So many possibilities await me!

But the message is not lost on me, despite the blinding and blunting aspect of avarice on one's normally pristine character. It is sometimes the old, the discarded, the neglected, the disregarded that harbor something deep at its core of inestimable value and worth. Two neighbors have gotten rescue dogs in the past week, both headed for euthanasia, both thought of no worth. Both are the sweetest most wonderful dogs on earth, loving and gentle and returning mountains of joy to their new families.

And how many times have I looked at the outer trappings of some old, odd, or grumpy,rumpled person and not bothered to love what is the core of his precious humanity, created by God for a purpose? Oh how I long to look on all creation with the eyes of my heavenly Father, seeing deep into the soul of a perhaps lost and wounded spirit longing to be set free....a diamond waiting to be released from a deep and dusty cavern.

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1 Peter 3:3-5 (New International Version)

³Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.