How Corby Got Her Name

I was asked to write a little something about Corby for a Blessing of the Animals service at our church. I am always honored to have the chance to speak in church. Here’s what I wrote:

I am writing this on a day when our dog, Corby, has been very bad. There was yelling and there was screaming. Some of us were crying. There was some blood.

“She woke up!” a good friend of mine joked after I texted her in all caps proclaiming: WE DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT WE’RE DOING PLEASE GIVE US THE NAME OF YOUR TRAINER TODAY HAS BEEN TERRIBLE.

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Corby got her name from the corner bar in downtown South Bend, Indiana, the town Jesse and I lived in for several years while he worked on his PhD in hurricane storm surge at that University that shall not be named. A few months after we were married, I was in a funk because if you didn’t know, South Bend is no Chicago, and I might have told my brand new husband as much. “This town is a hole!” is what I might’ve said.

Those of you who’ve come to know my husband might understand me when I say Jesse is a real-life Ross Geller. He is a volcano of facts, and it’s not just important, it is vital we all know those facts. This passion comes from a place of care and love, and a faith that claims we are in the world to both enjoy and take care of it. He does not suffer complainers.

And so the day I trash talked South Bend, he took me to an Italian deli and bakery downtown that served olives and cheeses and also donuts puffed up with powdered sugar that were hot to the touch. He took me to the city library and showed me the Newbery section and the section with books on writing, and he showed me the magazine section where I could get back issues of Vogue and Glamour and what I meant I say was The Atlantic and The Paris Review. He showed me the East Race, a man-made Kayak route that broke off from the St. Joseph River into raucous rapids, and then into the mouth again, where the current, Jesse told me, was much more threatening despite it’s peaceful demeanor.

Our backs were to Corby’s, our last stop that day, and over pints of Leinenkugel – top-notch brew for a grad student and a middle school teacher – I admitted maybe this town wasn’t so bad.

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The name Corby also came from the Reverend William Corby, a Holy Cross priest who served as a military Chaplain during the Civil War. On July 2, 1863 there was a Confederate attack on the Union soldiers who were defending Cemetery Ridge. Before the battle, Rev. Corby gave the soldiers general absolution – granting mercy from sins unconfessed. He wrote in his memoirs that this mercy was meant for all: “North or South, who were susceptible of it.”

I am thinking now of the battles we have been called to fight, or the battles we insist on fighting. I am considering what it is we passionately defend and what we pursue with the same kind of passion. I confess I am thinking more about the battles than I am of my sins.

I’m certainly not up here about to break down absolution – I barely know what the Presbyterians believe, let alone the Catholics. I admit though, I do like the concept of being susceptible to mercy and forgiveness without having confessed. I wonder if that kind of love helps wake us up to who we are, and how we’ve been created. And if we understand the inheritance of forgiveness and mercy we own, I wonder if that would help us act differently. I don’t mean better behaved or that we’ll follow all the rules, rather, that we’ll be able to live more genuinely, vulnerably, with kindness and the knowledge that everyone of us is fighting a great battle.

I wonder if that’s what it means to wake up.

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It is perhaps my life’s greatest surprise that Corby is my dog. Up until August 23, 2020, I have felt either fear, suspicion, or polite un-interest in dogs so totally certain of my opinion of them was I. Then, Corby walked into my backyard, sat herself in my lap, and that old Rilke quote came to life: “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

A love that knows no boundaries, a love that never leaves us – even in battle – even when we are so stubbornly sure we know about the world and our place in it. A love that turns us around, make us see and wonder differently. A love that wakes us up.