Being Present

The woman in the car rolled down her window and called, “what a cute face, what a cuuuttte faaaaccccee!” 

You probably guessed right away, as I did, that she wasn’t talking about me.  Though, I suppose if you wanted to stretch a point, she might have been.  OK, yeah, that would be a considerable stretch indeed.

No, she was talking about the dog.  We’ve been learning to walk on the leash, which is still at elemental stages like not getting wrapped around mailboxes and telephone poles.  Let’s just say we’re making progress. 

In the evening, as we walk up and down the block, what I am continually amazed by is the power of this dog to bring people out of themselves.  People see him, and it doesn’t matter if it’s men or women or children; it’s like iron drawn to a magnet.  They come down off their porches, or stop their cars and call out the window, or put down what they were doing, and come over to where he stands enthusiastically wagging his tail, fully focused on them ready to greet them like their existence in this world is the most amazing and wonderful thing ever imagined! 

I watch this repeated over and over every night on our walks, and I often wonder what the world looks like through Prince’s eyes?  And I envy him a little, this power that he has.  Where did I lose that childlike ability to be fully absorbed in the world?  To be present for my own life?  I spend so much time distracted, thinking of one thing while doing another.  This morning, I conducted an entire meeting in my head, complete with dialogue, while I was in the shower.   I couldn’t remember if I’d washed my hair or not.

Watching Prince greet an old man with unbounded joy, as if the man just that very moment stepped into this wonderful world, I wonder if this is what God means when God tells us “behold, I make all things new.”

That I have to untangle Prince from the man’s mailbox as we turn to continue our walk seems pretty trivial in comparison.