Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to… woof.
A few hours ago (at the time of this typing) the Supreme Court announced it would hear Trump’s I’m-immune-from-everything-you-can’t-charge-me case and frankly I’m still trying to process how this affects my forecasts of the rest of the electoral and calendar year. Plus by the end of tomorrow we will probably get a breakthrough update on the scheduling of Trump’s I-kept-classified-documents-in-the-pool-guests’-downstairs-unsecured-shitter-where-no-one-suspicious-or-dangerous-who-ever-made-a-reservation-with-Christine-in-Reception-who-never-went-through-security/criminal-investigation/ninja-training-could-ever-go-and-then-I-would-not-give-the-secret-documents-back-because-it’s-MY-shitter trial.
So I might break my extremely-disciplined-but-arbitrary-Thursday 7-8am deadline so I can process this set of updates. I’m trying to build a phased timeline for the rest of this year.
Regardless: my original post for this week was about my uncle who as a child idol-worshipped his father — a church planter and minister of the rez — once decided in his child-roping-mind to chase down the family dog with a lariat made of Grandmother’s clothesline and baptize that dog.
I’ll spare you the details but the important part of that story is that no matter how holy and pure the dog if you invert a Schnauzer over a bathtub of water that dog WILL act as if it is possessed by Beelzebub. And that all-legs-flailing-over-water is NOT confirmation that the dog is possessed by a demon it merely means it is possessed by being A DOG. And that sometimes you should be less Baptist in the name of the Lord and the ASPCA. (More about that uncle in a future newsletter.)
Rest assured: Grandmother rightfully subsequently deployed Corrective Measures and consoled that dog for its remaining years until that dog went to be with Jesus.
Clarification: I’m referring here to my OTHER Grandma. Not the one I told you about here who punched out an armed man in the middle of a dirt road in Missouri in broad daylight in the 1950s. Which means — if you’ve been a longtime reader of this newsletter and you’ve been keeping score you’ve already figured this out — I come from cowboys and ministers and pioneers on both sides of the family.
Which means I’ve always been doomed to Think Future. And to pet dogs gently. Forevermore.
More soon. Gotta think.
Hilarious...you know that one of the legendary questions in the history of the General Ordination Exams has to do with baptizing a dog. The question (as told to me colloquially) : a parishioner of long standing is in the last hours of life and begs you to baptize their beloved pet dog. Would you or wouldn't you? Support your answer from liturgical practice and theological understanding. This all might be apocryphal, but I like to think the question was really used and that whoever wrote it didn't dream that it would be taken seriously and used.