I was drawn to the subject of presence by a long-forgotten little book on Presence by Bishop Brent which I have read again and again. Much as I have gained from this book, I have in recent years realized how much difference Martin Buber has made in our thinking, for his vivid sense of meeting each other and of living dialogue has carried the insights of Brent much further. Then, knowing Albert Schweitzer, with his gift of being acutely present where he was, also helped to sharpen this dimension for me.
But all of these sources pale before the reading and rereading of the New Testament stories of Jesus where I have had burned into my mind what a man was like who was always present where he was. The greatest flashes of disclosure which we get from the Gospels seem to come to us out of the utterly fresh and unpredictable situations that rose in the course of his wandering almost as a vagrant across the land of Palestine. A woman is taken in adultery; he meets a woman at a well; a Roman centurion asks help for his servant; Martha complains in the course of preparing the meal at Bethany. The immortal words that came out of these ordinary situations of life showed a man utterly present where he was and speaking authentically to the occasion, Nothing for me reveals more conclusively God’s universal man than this gift of presence so powerfully disclosed. And those who have been inwardly drawn into his company and have taken his way down through the centuries have seemed to be marked by something of the same quality.
