My higher power (I call them God) has been speaking to me over the last couple of days through dog shit.  I love the way God can use anything at all to reach into my soul and plant peace.  I was in turmoil, distraught, under the crushing influence of someone else’s harsh judgement of my personal struggles, standing in the middle of my kitchen, tears running down a puffy face, unattached and not grounded when someone came in and told me there was dog shit on the drive.  We don’t have a dog.  Someone else had left it there.  I took a deep breath in and let it out gently.  My body grounded, my soul soothed.  We are as incapable of preventing other people’s judgement as we are of avoiding dog shit (said my higher power).

That was Sunday.  This is Tuesday.  I went out for a walk to pray.  I prayed about many things, swam in the beauty of the early day which is the same to me as God being above, below, around and within me – consciously.  And I encountered dog shit.  A large lolliping olive-coloured pile on the path up to the guns with my back to the sea.  A runny yellowish smear spread over several meters of pavement outside the shops on my way home.  And I thought about human nature.  Doggies naturally have to poop.  Its a by-product of their existence and doggies are naturally lovely. My similie:  human nature cannot avoid its tendency to prejudice, judgement, self-righteousness, hypochrisy.  These are unpleasant by-products of being human.  And the result is shitty behaviour, shitty relationships and God-damn shitty injustice.

So who clears up their dog’s shit?  Many people try hard to be religious about doing so.  Others are more casual and do it when they notice it. Some think that as long as no-one catches them out they have scored a goal over humanity by getting away with leaving it there.  What happens when we encounter dog shit?  Mostly we judge the person who left it there, never allowing for it to be an accident, assuming it was an ass-hole who left it deliberately.  Few of us, if any, will actually consider clearing up someone else’s dog’s shit.  We’re not even equipped to do it.  So it stays there to shock and offend and stink up our shoes and carpets.  I refer the reader to my similie.  There is peace in recognising that my human nature is both beautiful and ugly, and that I can only be forgiven to the extent that I am willing to forgive others.

I didn’t only see doggy doo this morning.  I saw the sun rise a gorgeous orb of fire above the roofs of Tanker’town’ and two blue tits in a leafless tree beside the building traffic.