From Dogs & Devotion by the Monks of New Skeet
Our experience teaches us that relating to a dog can be profoundly spiritual. In this book we have avoided religion and religious jargon and we generally avoid mixing religion with dog training. Nevertheless many of the ideas we hold about dogs have philosophical and spiritual basis that can be a catalyst for personal change and transformation.
St Francis of Asisi – Though his love of animals have been romanticized to the point of sentimentality, beneath the legend we find a human being who was conscious of the mystery of the interconnectedness of everything and who expressed this in his attitude of reverence and wonder. Both people and animals responded to him in dramatic ways.
Francis’s taming of the wild wolf of Gubbio resembles the way the prophet Daniel naturally communicated with the lions in their den, through the sensitive use of body language. These episodes point to a certain spiritual wholeness and integration as the keystones to relating optimally with animals, breaking down the traditional opposition between human and nonhuman creatures. By their focused inner attitude, these two saints unified the world of animals and human beings. Francis saw the elements of nature, the cosmos, and all living creatures as his brothers and sisters.
Jesuit Father and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin felt that the mystical vibration is inseparable from the scientific vibration, something often underscored by many later physicists. He proposed that the entire universe is moving toward a cosmic unification and transformation, which he called the Omega point.