So after yesterday’s accident I spent the day at work and then had a long and successful retreat meeting with students and my co-campus minister Katie.

I was pretty spent and I returned home with only one thing on my mind. I needed my dog. I was kind of cranky and I tend to take that out on my wife. And I know that the only sure cure for cranky is to go for a walk with Haze the Chihuahua and then let him curl up on my lap. When it’s time for bed, he comes barreling into our bed and he dives under the covers and curls up behind the knees of Marion or myself. We’ve been known to roll over on him and he’ll remind us of his presence with a sharp growl.

So we walked and cooled down together in the cool midnight air of Buffalo. It was an uneventful walk but it allows me time to do the Examen for the day and to search for the gratitude that my dog always is eager to show me. Yesterday was an easy one. No injuries in a car accident. The other driver admitted liability and her insurance is covering me completely. $2000 worth of damage to the back end of my car isn’t fun, but it’s a lease and so it’s not that big a deal. I was just glad everyone is OK. We can replace plastic and metal but not our lives.

Haze greeted me with some big tail wags and was free and easy in his gate as we walked not far from where the accident occurred. There was no other place for us to be. We just were able to enjoy a crisp cool evening, a semi-full moon and some…er..relief.

Haze doesn’t care what I drive. Or how much money is in the bank. Or what my title is at work. Haze just wants me, every night, to walk with him.

I could say similar things, of course about my lovely wife. And of course, about God, who always longs to walk with us.

But it is truly unbelievable how this little dog brings much peace to me. We humans all need to de-stress and when I got home, my worried wife needed to hold me and understand that I was OK. I was grumpy and exhausted and walking the dog could all to easily seem like one more task that needed to be checked off the list.

But peace is offered each time I attach that leash to harness and head out the door for a simple romp. We run and walk and chase a rabbit or two. We simply are alive and the momentary escape into a world where all that matters is that time to walk, reminds me that I am loved as a child of God, who offers us all we really need.

Ben Stein seems to understand this well:

I woke up last night and didn’t feel Haze anywhere nearby in my bed. My wife also got up to get a drink and when she returned I asked her where the little guy was. She didn’t know. We checked around. Not in the dog bed in my office. Not in his crate in the living room and not curled up on the couch or a chair. I went back into the living room and pulled back the covers to find Haze in the corner of my bed curled up in our comforter. His reaction? Well…take a look for yourself.

Submission. Caught. You got me playing hide and seek and now I’m it.

God is a lot like finding a dog under the covers. When we find God and realize that God has been there all along–there is nothing more to do than to simply rest easy and maybe scratch a belly. And then simply sit in peace with this newfound simplicity.

So get a dog and you just might find God, lurking amidst the crap in life.

And even admid the crap that comes with walking a dog.