The Playful Presence

I try to avoid getting too lyrical or mystical about play. That's why I decided to focus on plain old, trivial old fun.

Recently, I came across a novel by Dean Koontz, called One Door Away From Heaven. Near the end of it, he talks about dogs and their connection to a "playful Presence." Here's the quote:

"Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship, creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not of the highest, and that therefore are simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent. The combination of the innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve as a bridge between what is transient and what is eternal, between the finite and the infinite.

"...For those who despair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a loneliness so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they were born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the sacred nature of life may be clearly experienced without the all but blinding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy, and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along the shores of dream seas, with a profound awareness of the playful Presence abiding in all things..."

I've been so touched by this idea of dogs as being messengers of some kind of playful Presence that I even tried to write Mr. Koontz, only to find myself enrolled in his fan club. But it makes a kind of wonderful poetic sense. Dogs are so endlessly playful, always inviting us to celebrate life. And to think that there is a "Presence" - and a playful one at that - to which they are attuned, well, it's almost enough to make a guy get religion or something.