Cosmo and Reading

 

 

“You know what Cosmo was doing this morning?”  I looked around the dinner table to see if any of my family knew the answer to my question.

“Probably nothing,” Elliot guessed.  “He just lies around and sighs every so often.”

“Wrong,” I said.  It is true that Cosmo sighs a lot.  I’ve never figured it out why.  Dogs have the nicest lives and yet, they do sigh as though they are longing for Dog-topia.

“He probably had the zoomies and was tearing around the downstairs,” Victoria guessed.

“No, not that either,” I said.

“I give up,” said Vincent.

“He was studying Elise’s first grade, “Learning to Read” book,” I said.  “He really seemed like he was making good progress on it.”

“Cosmo’s a smart dog,” Victoria said contentedly.

“He’s smarter than Elise,” Elliot said.  “But that’s not saying much.”

“I think he’s trying to fit in,” I said.  “He knows the rest of his family reads and so he wants to be able to do so as well.  I’m going to get him his own special copy of ‘Go, Dog, Go!’ and maybe some of the Clifford books too.  I’m sure he’ll enjoy them.”

“Maybe if you get him ‘Call of the Wild,’ he’ll run away and join a wolf pack,” Elliot said.  That, I must confess, seems unlikely.  The chance of a wolf pack letting in a Golden Doodle, much less letting him lead the pack seems slim to none.

Reading is an amazing thing.  You can do it for the enjoyment factor and you can do to learn things and often for both of those things.  It saddens me to realize that about fifty percent of Americans hadn’t read a single book over the last year.

I suppose I fall in the minority, because I read 114 books last year and 82 books so far this year. 

Of course, in another era, the majority of people in society couldn’t read.  It is estimated that probably around 5 percent of the citizens in ancient Israel could read.  Quite simply, when you are expending all of your energy simply to scratch a living out of the desert soil, sitting down with a mystery novel or a biography was furthest from any of their minds.  Beyond which, there weren’t scrolls to be found most places other than the temple.  Copies had to be made by hand and were very few and very expensive.

Even in that time, they understood the importance of internalizing the Torah.  Moses told the people, “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.  And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:7-9)

The pages of the Bible are full of wisdom.  There are stories there for learning and most of all to know and understand how we can approach God.

It is said that Martin Luther had one of the greatest impacts on the worldwide education level.  It wasn’t because of his break with the Catholic church, but because he translated the Bible into German and desired that those who spoke the German language would be able to pick it up and read it for themselves.

Perhaps it is dangerous to think of people reading the Bible for themselves.  Maybe they will twist its meaning and come up with ideas that aren’t orthodox.  Then again, maybe they will read and understand a little better who they are and who God is.

If my dog can learn to read and better himself, then so can you!