An Ancient Oracle and a Disorderliness of Dogs

Divine guidance in messy circumstances

I like to visualize all beingness as a vast tapestry of multicolored threads, each one the life of an individual being—a human here, a salmon there, over there a triceratops—each one interwoven in intricate patterns with the surrounding threads. There are lumpy spots where a life becomes a bit knotty, and tattered places where the threads just don’t want to weave together, so if you’re standing with your nose touching the tapestry it might seem like a bad piece of work that makes no artistic or practical sense, and just needs to be thrown out. But if you step away and take it in from a distance—perhaps from a vantage point outside of spacetime—it is actually coursing with beauty and meaning.

This is a story about the holiness that is woven through the mess of life, or the mess that is woven through the holiness of life, depending on which way you look at it, and about one of the guides I have found for intentional weaving.

Early this year I was going through a knotty, frightening, exacting period in my life’s weaving. I already had a spiritual practice of prayer, meditation, scripture reading, and journaling. I strongly felt the presence of the divine, but as for guidance, I wasn’t sure I could separate the signal from the noise. That’s when I was led to the I Ching, the ancient Chinese method of divination that has been in continuous use since 1000 BC and is probably the second most read work of literature ever, after the Bible.

To help us find inner truth, the I Ching is given to us as a guide. (The I Ching is not a religion, but a guide to discover the hidden, inner truths of life, and to help us reflect those truths to others.) Our search becomes a spiritual journey which leads to moral and spiritual integration. Through the hard lessons of experience, through misunderstanding, and making mistakes, we discover the guidelines that are to be applied in the field of action.

—Carol K. Anthony, A Guide to the I Ching

On to the story:

A couple weeks ago, I shared the anecdote below on Notes. The Note contains essential background information for what follows. Click and all will be revealed.

The sheriff’s office never responded, to my knowledge. There are tradeoffs involved in living in a poorer, rural county. County government does not bother you or police what you do on your own property, which is one of the reasons why I love living here. On the other hand, they’re not going to do anything about your neighbor’s dogs. I find this to be an acceptable arrangement.

The neighbor did end up being able to round up all the dogs and found and fixed the weakness in the fence. So no more roving packs of half-feral pit bulls in the neighborhood. Yay!

But, a week and a half later, we were faced with another glimpse at the disorder caused by the dogs. I won’t get into the details, only to say that it didn’t have any direct effect on us except that it produced a sinking feeling of discomfort around the situation. This time, I asked the oracle if there was anything that could be done.

The I Ching delivers its oracles in the form of hexagrams: arrangements of solid and broken lines which are then interpreted by the ancient texts, which are expounded upon by hundreds of years of further study, recorded in a vast number of books about I Ching divination. It is possible to get either one or two hexagrams from a single reading. The first one describes the situation. If you get a second one, it can suggest a potentiality hidden in the situation, or a way of approaching a problem. When your reading contains two hexagrams, there are always “changing lines” which show the change from the state of one hexagram to the next. This, in I Ching parlance, is called “receiving lines,” and the lines are of great import in assessing the oracle’s answer to your question.

So, when I asked “What, if anything, can be done about the problem of my neighbor’s dogs?”—I received a line. It was (according to the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching translation):

Isolated through opposition, one sees one’s companion as a pig covered with dirt, as a wagon filled with devils. First one draws a bow against him, then one lays the bow aside. He is not a robber; he will woo at the right time. As one goes, rain falls; then good fortune comes.

The first sentence gently pokes at my (perhaps exaggerated) view of my neighbor and his dogs. The second sentence exactly describes the powerful experience that I had shared in my Note a few days prior. The I Ching isn’t always so incredibly on the nose, but it’s not uncommon. The third sentence suggests a potential solution—a union or cooperative effort that could come “at the right time.” And the fourth sentence reassures me that even though the situation has its attendant frustrations and inconveniences (rainfall), it is possible for things to turn out well.

This reading got me to thinking, what can I glean from the problem at hand, here and now, without any immediate solution in sight? In other words, what is the inner truth?

Well, for starters, being mentally and emotionally accosted by my neighbor’s disorderliness of dogs (symbolized by pigs and devils in the changing line) gives me cause to reflect upon ways in which my own disorderliness can have far-reaching effects on myself and others. Perhaps my own disorderliness is not so obvious, offensive, or potentially dangerous as my neighbor’s, but it is there.

The negative: I, too, leave things undone, or half-done. For instance, I’m currently conducting some home repairs and improvements that should have been done years ago, which have resulted in somewhat costly new problems that, left unaddressed, could easily have spiraled out of control. I, too, sometimes take on more than I can manage with the resources at hand. Therefore, I have credit card debt and forestalled dreams.

And the positive: I, too, try my best to fix the problems I have created through my own error, negligence, or lack of foresight. This realization endears the neighbor to me. The situation has run amok, but he has built reinforcements and taken pains in an attempt to contain it. He is sincerely trying. So am I. That’s more than can be said for many.

I don’t know what other good fortune can possibly result from this ongoing experience, beyond its usefulness in the work. But the I Ching, in partnership with fate, is teaching me not to distrust the difficulties inherent in living. Solutions unfold in their own time when I allow myself to be led innocently through life’s changes. Guidance is always available. If only I had known this sooner! And it isn’t even necessary to perform perfect faith in order to receive it. If totally trusting God to work things out is too great a leap from where I currently stand, it is enough to simply eliminate active distrust.

There’s also a certain grace in living across the street from a barking, growling disorderliness of dogs. It may sound counterintuitive, but I think it helps me quiet the feral thoughts in my own mind. A chorus of pitbulls howling: this, too, is holy!

And then, out of the chaos: gratitude. There’s the one dog in particular. Roxy, her name is. Pure, slobbering love in a fur suit. I thank the heavens for sending her trotting up onto my porch that day, to soothe my frustrations and fears long enough to lay down my arms and remember that, despite the knots and tatters—or maybe in a sense because of them—the tapestry is beautiful.

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