For many years, I’ve been spending much of my prayer time trying to grasp the experience of God’s presence in the context of personal prayer. Most often, I come back to a penetrating observation from Henri Nouwen: “To pray unceasingly does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to talk to God instead of talking to other people. Rather, it means to think, speak, and live in the presence of God.” (Spiritual Direction, p. 61). Nouwen’s two sentences would be a perfect short meditation on presence, it’s a marvelous description of the spiritual life, one that has several dimensions, and yet is so beautifully self-contained.  

I have been reading and meditating on Henri Nouwen’s writing for years and, after all this time, I am still struggling to live in God’s presence in my daily life. Oh, I have my moments of clarity, but I must admit that this experience is often elusive, even though I believe it is all around us and in us.  A recent family experience, however, allowed me to encounter God’s presence directly. It is a story about a dog.

Our oldest son and his family began their lives together in Austin, Texas and one of the first things they did was adopt a shelter dog, Maggie, who was born on June 5, 2009. When the family moved to Philadelphia in 2011, they were told that dogs were not permitted in their apartment building, so our son and his wife asked if we could take Maggie as “foster parents” and we gladly accepted. What made this workable is that Maggie’s own family, soon to be two adults and three children, lived not far away from my wife and me. There were frequent visits to both homes and Maggie became the family dog, no question. Always, Maggie had a quiet presence that was unmistakable. She was gentle, intelligent, happy, very sweet, funny, agile, and always comfortable with children. And then, in the spring of 2021, our son and his wife accepted new school positions, this time in San Antonio, Texas. At the end of June, Maggie was on her way back to Texas with her original family. And everyone one was thrilled, especially our three grandchildren.

In November 2021, Maggie was diagnosed with bone cancer and this week she died.  Our son and his family were devoted to Maggie, and they were committed to making sure she could be herself as long as possible. Not only did Maggie live but her presence in her family enlarged, and as she grew sicker, I believe she became her own creature of God and an instrument of God’s grace. Her family was touched by her stoicism and by her joy in living and being cared for. Maggie became a teacher of how a family’s joy can become part of what it means to “think, speak and live in the presence of God.”. And as the grief of Maggie’s death takes hold of her family—and of my wife and me— we’ve all been able acknowledge that Maggie was a gift and to acknowledge and share deep gratitude for her life with us. 

Who would believe that Maggie, a shelter dog we called a “thoroughbred mutt,” would be such an instrument of God’s goodness and God’s presence?  I can say that Maggie’s family and her “foster parents” believe because they experienced the power and grace of the presence of God through the life and death of a dog. We all learned a remarkable holy lesson of presence.

— Father Peter