The Scent of Tov (Heb - "good")

Our family dog, a beagle, specializes in smelling. I enjoy watching her walk around with her nose to the ground, completely focused on tracking a scent. I remember taking her on a walk, and she was tracking some deer who had crossed the path. Eventually we came upon a group of deer standing beside us, but our beagle did not see them because she would not lift her head, keeping her nose to the ground.

Here are a few lines from Denise Levertov’s poem, Overland to the Islands, describing a dog’s “intently haphazard” way of following a scent:

Under his feet

rocks and mud, his imagination, sniffing,

engaged in its perceptions—dancing

edgeways, there’s nothing

the dog disdains on his way,

nevertheless he

keeps moving, changing

pace and approach but

not direction—‘every step an arrival.’

In Eugene Peterson’s biography, we learn how his life reflected this poem:

  “The imagery spoke to him so deeply because he had been that dog for decades.

  His life and work had been more like tracing a scent than following a map.

  Discovery, not direction . . . Eugene had never truly mapped his future, never

  tried to lay some ordered path toward a clear career goal. Intent? Sure. But

  haphazard too. The whole meandering journey had been a dog sniffing the wind,

  the next whiff being the only real clue. And what has been the scent? Holiness?

  The Presence?” (A Burning in My Bones by Winn Collier, 60).

This experience also describes my experience in life and ministry, including joyful arrivals at discoveries in the care we steward from conversation to conversation. As we begin 2026, may we keep finding and following His scent of tov (Hebrew word for “good”) . . .