Golden Hydrant

Golden Hydrant Club 

What do you know, here’s Anu Garg with one of my favorite old words this morning. And not only the word, but using it relatedly (Anu always gives us an example of usage) in a focus of my vocation. "Is Homo sapiens the only species vouchsafed to be in the afterlife club?" Jeremie Harris; Soul Searching: When Did We Become So Special?; Skeptic (Altadena, California); Issue 2, 2014. 

First opening our new (1976/79) Book of Common Prayer and participating in its liturgies, I noticed “vouchsafe” had been almost banished. Not quite, there it is here and there, now and again, but nearly. What a shame, lofty, it lent airs, a touch of class.

Vouchsafe: to grant or give something as if as a favor. It works well with our concept of grace, doesn’t it. As in “here vouchsafe to all thy servants what we ask of thee today.”  But what catches my eye is the context of Anu’s usage example. Is Homo sapiens the only species vouchsafed to be in the afterlife club? a delightful question and proposition. What does it take to get in “the afterlife club”? 

Self awareness. 
Mine, yours, or the dog's?

It takes awareness. Self-awareness such as surfaces when someone talks about what we will be enjoying in 2045 and “I can’t wait.” If sensitive, they may sense that they have offended me by looking forward to something they will be enjoying together after I am dead and will not be there to enjoy it with them. They will pause awkwardly, hem and haw, change the subject. “Do you think we’ll have rain?” But let me muddle on. I’ll try unsuccessfully to be succinct. For certain I’ll be inconclusive.

Only humans seem to have self-awareness. No matter his intelligence, a bottle-nose dolphin swims and leaps, eats fish, responds and enjoys life, unaware that one day he will die. Only humans are self-aware. A trick on my dog was to lean a large mirror against the wall and watch as he walks by. It startles him. He jumps back, yelps, barks. Growl, bark, may attack. May sniff the other dog’s nose but for some reason cannot sniff the other dog's behind. May jump back, wag his tail. If he is aggressive, the enemy is equally threatening. If he likes what he sees, the other dog is friendly. Eventually he peers round behind the mirror and is puzzled: where’s that dog? He is stumped because he cannot grasp that the dog in the mirror is himself, he is not self-aware. 

So far as we know, humans are the only creatures that can have ourselves as our object. I can comb my hair, apply makeup, check that there’s no spinach on my front tooth, make sure my slip is not showing or that my shirt is on straight. Self-aware, I can have myself as my object. I start worrying about death, my own death, I will die, OMG what will become of me? I cannot imagine existence without me. Religion becomes selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed by obsessing with “are you saved?” instead of "will you love your neighbor as yourself?" In the case of Christians, we shift from Jesus’ urging compassion, mercy and love, to selfish concern about what happens to us after this life. We focus until hope disguises itself as knowledge in religious masquerade. Jerry Falwell’s phrase, “as sure for heaven as if you were already there.” My dog has no such fear, no self-awareness, neither fear nor hope. 

A recent General Convention of The Episcopal Church adopted liturgies for pet funerals that included allusions to afterlife.

What’s the answer to Anu Garg and Jeremie Harris? Is the afterlife club vouchsafed only to us? Do dogs go to heaven? Converse, does Homo sapiens not go to heaven? Are there fire hydrants along the streets paved with gold? Does believing make so.

W+

Cartoon pinched online. Many thanks. W