I’m sitting outside on a pleasant spring afternoon. In the sheltered nook before our front door, I have brick underfoot and at my back, a black gum tree overhead, and the green of Nancy’s garden sloping above me. Native Mayapple and fern and Jack-in-the-pulpit, Joe Pye weed and cone flowers, wood sorrel and bellwort, foam flower, hosta, little brown jug, trillium and more form a lush foreground. And Mona, napping in my lap with with her head hanging over the armrest.

Nancy found Mona at the pound, a tiny black-with-white-accents mix of breeds with an intense desire to engage and please. She’s ten years old and 50 pounds now, but still a tiny thing in my mind.

Sometime in her first week with us, while I was eating breakfast and reading the paper, she kept asking for something. Twice I took her outside to pee, but that was not what she wanted. Finally, I paid attention and let her lead me to a pool of morning sun on the living room carpet. She curled into the warmth, inviting me to join her. Forget the unimportant stuff, she seemed to say; come enjoy the sunshine with me. Forget the doing, enjoy the being. Come to Sabbath.

She still calls me to Sabbath. As her presence on my lap attests, she craves companionship and touch. Almost daily, we sit together on the sofa for at least a short time, her head resting on my thigh. Not infrequently, she whines and nudges and prods until I take her onto my lap as now and hold her as I once did my children. She’ll nap with her head hanging over the arm of the chair until my own arms begin to fall asleep and I have to move her off my lap. We say she needs her loving cup filled.

Wouldn’t we humans be better off if we had the sense to recognize when our loving cups need filling, and the courage to ask for the communion and Sabbath rest our hearts desire?