The Way of Wrigley

My dog, Wrigley, has a "one-track" mind.

As he tears after the squirrels in our backyard every morning, I imagine his mental sequence, if translated into English, would go something like this: "Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel." Then a bird flies through his line of vision and for a second his mind switches gear. "Bird, bird, bird, bird, bird."

I am not a pet psychiatrist, but I would wager that Wrigley does not have the ability to separate his thoughts from his actions. Even if he wanted to, I do not think Wrigley could auto-pilot after a squirrel while thinking, "I hope there is a piece of crust from my master's leftover pizza in my food bowl today. And when I get inside again, I have to remember to look for that piece of rope I was playing with on Thursday."

Wrigley's maniacal focus is the source of constant humor. However, at the same time, I am a little jealous of my crazy dog's one-track consciousness - his ability to fiercely focus on the exact moment he is currently living.

Humans, of course, have a unique and confusing ability to separate thoughts from actions. We can be doing one thing, but thinking something completely unrelated.

On the plus side, our split-track minds allow us to multi-task, to iron while talking on the phone for example. But on the minus end, this also allows us to slip into hypnosis where we iron over our hand without thinking.

It is not just ironing mishaps, or driving past my exit while I daydream, that underline my less than stellar awareness. Even scarier is the fact that entire chunks of my existence are directed by ritual familiarity - I wake up, I go to work, I eat, I sleep. Then I do it all over again with mind-numbing regularity. I am startled when ordinary things like the descent into my pillow, another weekly episode of the Apprentice, or the appearance of a new grey hair remind me that real-life days, weeks, and years have passed while I operated in zombie mode.

This separation of thoughts from actions must not be what God intended because when I check out of the moment I am living, I cannot seem to keep even my simplest physical or spiritual goals in mind. I go through the motions of my day while my mind is absorbed in tangent topics. And too often, my physical intentions - like jogging every day or spending time with friends - and spiritual ambitions - like meditating or practicing Scripture - are left on the back burner which, unfortunately, I forgot to turn on.

I don't even realize my own obliviousness until the few minutes of confusion or regret that surface just before I fall asleep.  Here, I must come to grips that I have somehow made it to the end of another day without applying myself with fervency toward my spiritual goals.

This is the darkness of daily disillusionment when I must give up my illusion of a well-managed life and see the gaps between who I want to be and who I was today.

In the mornings of life, when I seek renewal, I desperately want to rejoin my thoughts and actions. I want to gradually reform my daily rituals so that waking up and showering and eating and all the other hypnotic, repetitive moments are laced with reminders of my spiritual intentions. I think this is why God told the Israelites to talk about his commandments while they did everyday things like sitting at home or walking along the road, lying down or getting up. This is why he told them to literally strap the commandments on their bodies and write them on their houses and gates. (Deuteronomy 6)

I am on this chosen-people quest to improve my own awareness; to rejoin my thoughts with my actions; to fully live the moments God gives me. If I can wake up and think of rising to a new life, if I can let water splash over me and remember that my soul too is being cleansed, if I can eat Rice Krispies while remembering that I am first and foremost a spiritual bread eater and a living water drinker then I can begin to pray continuously, as the Bible suggests, and to borrow from the way of Wrigley. To inhale and remember the good things of God that I breathe in with each new day, to exhale and remember how God is purging my life of flaws and dysfunction. In consciously letting my moments become reminders of my aims, I bring my life back into alignment with my goals.

I begin to tour my world in pursuit of God, thinking "God, God, God, God, God."