Life with Forrest

A few weeks back our ol' buddy Forrest the three legged Greyhound contracted an infection in his remaining back leg. Within a couple short days the infection spread throughout his entire back leg. The leg was compromised having had surgery when he lost his other leg in the surgery back on Halloween '06. We miss him desperately, but after a few days watching the progress of the infection knew we would have to say goodbye to him. That's him smiling big above.

Holly is pictured with him, and she is adapting to life without Forrest. She howls when we leave her at home alone, and snuggles up real close to us in the bed. We adopted Forrest and Holly together, and they had been ever together since they both retired from the racetracks about 8 years ago.

Forrest had really become my buddy. The last two years were filled with caring for him as he recovered from his accident, and the lessons I learned about life while caring for him are far more valuable to me than they were to him I am sure.

If animals end up in heaven, of which I do not have a theological consideration one way or the other, I will want to sit down with Forrest and spend some time hanging out with him long before I will want to visit the typical heroes of my faith like Paul the Apostle, Petr Chelcicky, John Huss, or Harald Bredesen.

Petr Chelcicky - More Quotes

"And, just as temporal government cannot exist properly with too great a number of lords, similarly and more so, Christian faith cannot stand and be preserved with a multitude of wicked hordes and a crowd of lords, so useless and destructive of faith, men who cause division, inequality, haughtiness, oppression, hatred, conflicts, and violence of some against others. Even though they boast of being of one faith, they are far behind the pagans in respect to unity, which is rent by their wicked machinations."

"To be sure, the wicked men have entered into all kinds of unions, but Christ’s disciples cannot be in them, since these unions cannot bear comparison with the law of Christ, which is based on true honest goodness and in which the people of God are ruled by the truth of his word, in faith and in grace, like the household of one husbandman, standing in true obedience before God aside from whom there is no other lord. There can be no greater unfaithfulness to the rule of God than the division and sundering caused by these factions and their arrogation to themselves of laws apart from His law. The law of God will not assent to their conflicting peculiarities; indeed, every horde tries to draw God down to itself, desiring to have its distinctive peculiarities sanctioned by the law of God."

Petr Chelcicky was a Bohemian reformer during the Hussite reformation. He was born in 1390. Today he is honored by uniquely differing groups - Anabaptists, and anarchists. This quote from his writing Net of Faith gives a clue as to why bioth these groups might like him. Want to read a little Chelcicky?

Petr Chelcicky - Can you guess why I like this guy?

Petr Chelchicky (pronounced Chelchitsky - gutteral Ch at beiginning) was a Bohemian reformer during the time of the far more famous Jan Huss. Here in the only writing translated into English he speaks of the transition of the church in the time of Constantine, and relates how Pagan rulers rule better without the influence of a powerful ecclesiastical political power.

"It is clear that a royal realm fares better among pagans than among these confused Christians, who have appropriated to themselves dominions. For among the pagans there are no such ecclesiastical lords, so increased in numbers and so useless as sores on a body, for pain is the only thing they give."

This guy is radical - isn't he? I love a balanced iconoclast. Wanna read a little Petr Chelcicky? Check out the Net of Faith.