It was a terribly sad week at the Rectory. After thirteen and a half years, our beloved boxer Gerta was put to sleep following a difficult month of decline.

Gerta came into our lives while I was serving at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas. She joined our family that very first summer—a delightful and troublesome nine-month-old West-By-God-Virginia born puppy.

Gerta and I bonded from the moment we met, and from that day forward, I delighted in her—except when I didn’t. One of my clearest memories of her will always be from our last day in Dallas, the afternoon before our road trip to Chestnut Hill. We were staying overnight with a dear friend who had just successfully sold her home and was preparing to relocate to New Jersey.

We left Gerta and our older boxer, Fincher, alone in her house, as we had many times before. But this time, we returned to find an entire windowsill chewed through—along with a three-inch strip of plaster beneath it. Had it only required sanding and painting, I’d have been annoyed but not undone. However, Gerta had other plans. That three-inch strip of plaster? Covered in designer wallpaper.

We had twelve hours before departure to repair the damage. Thank God I’m handy. With a little luck and a lot of creative problem-solving, we were patched, papered, and presentable by 2 a.m.

I was furious at the time. But now—after this last month of carrying her up and down stairs in the middle of the night—I’d gladly patch a thousand windows if it meant seeing her romp once more through the front garden of the Rectory. Her lolling tongue, her eager eyes, her astonishing patience with every new puppy that came into our home….all of it now turns that terrible windowsill into a cherished memory of a life lived joyfully and fully.

So what does any of this have to do with God? With Jesus?

You might be asking yourself those questions on a rainy Thursday morning. In his delightful introduction to Christian theology, Aidan Nichols devotes his fourth chapter to the many arguments philosophers have made for the existence of God. The first—and for me today, the most powerful—is the human capacity to wonder.

To look into the heavens and wonder….to sit with sorrowful memories in the wake of death….to gaze across the crowded airport seating at Gate A17 at Logan and marvel at the many faces and hidden stories of my fellow travelers—this, for the Christian, is no mere biological quirk. Wonder is a gift. It is the natural capacity given to every human soul that allows us to ask: why all this, instead of nothing at all?

Sure, I could jump straight to the claim that dogs are proof enough of God’s existence (though I certainly wasn’t thinking that the day Gerta chewed through the wall). But it’s that deeper sense of wonder—the kind of wonder that transmutes even the most leaden memory into golden beauty—that stirs the first impulse of the human heart to seek after God.

In memoria, Gerta.