The World is Full of Presence

The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a city—vital, decaying, dangerous, enchanting, oppressive, perhaps even seductive the comforting presence of loved ones—long unseen, sometimes long dead the troubling presence of people with whom we have unfinished business the evocative presence of a sacred space—

perhaps a cathedral, a grove of trees, a shore’s edge, or wherever we are called into awareness of the transcendent the…