Three of the pups wandered off immediately as the little dog weaned them, but one, a dis-coordinated male, stayed around and was tolerated by its mother.  Grainier felt sure this dog was got of a wolf, but it never even whimpered in reply when the packs in the distance...sang at dusk.  The creature needed to be taught its nature, Grainier felt.  One evening he got down beside it and  howled.  The little pup only sat on its rump with an inch of pink tongue jutting stupidly from its closed mouth.  "You're not growing in the direction of your own nature, which is to howl when the others do," he told the mongrel.  He stood up straight himself and howled long and sorrowfully over the gorge, and over the low quiet river he could hardly see across this close to nightfall...Nothing from the pup. But often, threafter, when Grainier heard the wolvesat dusk, he laid his head back and howled for all he was worth, because it did him good.

Denis Johnson, Train Dreams, pg. 53

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?...each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists ofour behavior, and the reaction of God to usm ight be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgemental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? Which how much assurance do we perform it?

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 124)