Black Dot Diary

Jazzie the Bas­set Hound waits mourn­fully for a morsel.

Two years ago I was cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing the Island of Mag­giore in Italy, fol­low­ing the same path walked by St. Fran­cis to his sea­side grotto on the shores of Lake Trasi­meno, the liq­uid jewel of Umbria.

Accord­ing to leg­ends, in 1211 a local fish­er­man gave St. Fran­cis a fish but Fran­cis, ever the lover of ani­mals, threw it back. The fish grate­fully fol­lowed St. Fran­cis around the lake until the saint bestowed on it a spe­cial bless­ing. St. Fran­cis became known as the patron saint of ani­mals (and later of ecology).

Yes­ter­day, I was once found myself think­ing about St. Fran­cis, this time at Domin­ion Brook Park near Sid­ney, BC. It was the annual get together of Bas­set Hounds and their own­ers and they came from as far away as Van­cou­ver and Courte­nay. In a green field over­look­ing the blue waters of the Sal­ish sea , amidst a throng of 29 squirm­ing, bay­ing Bas­set Hounds, two patient Fran­cis­can fri­ars bestowed bless­ings on the dogs, sprin­kling each with holy water fol­low­ing the read­ing of St. Fran­cis’ The Can­ti­cle of All Crea­tures.

I hadn’t heard this can­ti­cle before, but was struck by its poetry and pro­found rev­er­ence for nature — for “brother sun”, “sis­ter moon” and “mother earth”. It was writ­ten in the 1200s, a time when con­cepts such as ani­mals rights, envi­ron­men­tal­ism and even human rights were ignored or scorned. But St. Fran­cis, who walked away from his life as the son of a wealthy cloth mer­chant, fol­lowed his own path

I’m not of the Chris­t­ian faith but I felt a deep rev­er­ence for the words of St. Fran­cis. These words ele­vated the autumn morn­ing and even lent a par­tic­u­lar grace to the Bas­sett Hounds who are decid­edly one of the most ungainly of the canines (though any good Bas­set Hound owner will tell you they are beautiful).

And I firmly agreed with St. Fran­cis that a true com­pass of any person’s nature can be found in the way they treat ani­mals. He said, “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s crea­tures from the shel­ter of com­pas­sion and pity, you will have men who will deal like­wise with their fel­low men.“

So that was my Sun­day, amidst the blessed Bas­set Hounds. Thank, Lydia, for orga­niz­ing this annual event and to every­one else who con­tributed. And thank you to Vic­to­ria Adopt­a­bles for bring­ing Jazzie the Bas­set to our house of mis­fits, where some­how we all fit.

Tags: animal rights, Assisi, Basset Hound, ecology, Italy, Jazzie, Sidney, St. Francis, Victoria Adoptables

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Community, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.