I began several times intending to write about God.  Finding traction was difficult. There was the distraction of Rosie the Labrador.  At 5:30, she came bursting from her night of quiet, eager to taste and smell and run and roll in her world.  And she so wants me, you, everyone to experience it.  She licks my leg, urging me out of my chair, bounding forward through the screen—through the screen—that could never be a barrier.  

“Silly dog! You broke the screen! Ran right through!”

But who is the silly one?  Rosie the Labrador challenges every supposed barrier.  Runs through some, paws at others but tests them all.  Not for any grand purpose other than to live the life of a Labrador with which she was blessed and has blessed us.

She bounds back up the stairs, tail beating a rhythm on my metal chair.  She paws my legs inviting them to move.  She sniffs my arm, tongue tasting my knee, eyes alert to all movement, nose to all smells-those I’ll never know.  

She wins.  We went on a walk.  I left the phone and ear-buds at home.  And I heard some things I would have otherwise missed.