Stay

Stay

     In obedience competition one of the more difficult things we ask of our dogs is to remain in a stay line. All the competing dogs, having already completed their individual exercises, are asked to form a line and they either remain sitting or lying down, as their handler walks away from them across the ring. They have to remain in a stay line for at least three minutes without moving. In advance obedience, the handler moves out of sight from the dogs.
     It is the last exercise of the obedience routine. More than one team, coming into this final portion of the trial with a near perfect score, has been disqualified because their dog moved in the stay line. It may be that the dog decided to lie down, rather than remain seated, or visa versa. Sometimes a dog will decide that there is something more interesting across the way that demands their immediate attention. Once, during a competition with Jack, we had completely our individual exercises satisfactorily. We did the first part of the stay line with Jack sitting perfectly. Yes! It looked like we were finally on our way to getting our first title. We came to the last exercise, the long down. Jack lay down and I walked across the ring, turned and faced Jack just in time to see him fly through the air. Disqualified! It didn’t matter that someone in the next ring had flipped the mat Jack was lying on (accidentally). He had moved and we were finished. It is hard to stay, even when you’re trying.
     It is hard to stay. In Soul Friends: Finding Healing with Animals, by Kate Nicoll, MSW, she writes, “The stay in a line of dogs demonstrates the ability for both the dog and the human to be in sync; the communication is clear, consistent and the picture is one of self-containment.” Stay means to “stay in place even as the world moves around you, stay in place even as I leave you, stay in a vulnerable position even when I walk away and stay true to yourself even when everyone else moves on. The metaphors are potentially endless and powerful.”
     It isn’t just dogs who find it difficult to stay in one place; we humans have a hard time staying put. One of the first pieces of Scripture that I learned in my Old Testament class in seminary was, “A wandering Aramean was my father…,” referring to the call of Father Abraham. Sometimes, like Abraham, we are called by God to wander. “Not all who wander are lost” J.R.R. Tolkien writes, in The Lord of the Rings. But more likely for the rest of us, it is just our curiosity to see what lies down the road that causes us to break the stay line. We are afraid that we may miss something. What we don’t realize is just how much we are already missing by always being on the move, always sniffing around; we fail to really see what’s before us. In the Rule of Saint Benedict, staying in one place, staying in community, was one of the primary rules that Benedict set down for his community. It became a rule, because even in the 5th century, Christians were seized with a sense that God was best apprehended out there rather than in here.

     When my sister Mary was here we drove up and down the coast of Maine with her family trying to see as much as we could in the short time they had here, leaving us all a bit tired and frazzled. But our favorite part was just staying in the cottage, drinking coffee on the back deck, watching sail boats and telling stories or just drinking in the silence and companionship. Stay. Stay in place even as the world moves around you. Mary, I wish you were still here. Stay. At least, here in my heart, I know that you’ll stay.