Walk, This one may sound a little lighter, but it’s a habit of life nonetheless, filled with profound meaning and potential.
Like an infant’s first words, so too their first steps are celebrated. Suddenly, their world is much larger. They’re on their way!
Walking is considered a defining aspect of homo erectus. I want to suggest it is crucial to our mental and spiritual health, as much as to our physical health.
I hasten to add that I am mindful that not all of us are able to walk in this way, so I’d like to stretch my own meaning to include movement in various ways, where we can.
There are several basic things about walking. First, we are close to the ground. Walking allows us to see things growing, to notice when it’s very dry or plants and flowers are freshly blooming. We may feel part of things, alive in and with the universe. This is a special gift, available to us freely, continually, and without distinction.
In reality, though, many people do not receive this gift, because they live and move within cacoons of metal and glass. I remember chatting with a friend about something in a street near where he worked. He said he had never seen it, though he drove past it twice a day. Never once did he walk in that neighbourhood, seeing what was there.
Whether we walk or not is a significant life choice for people in modern societies. We say we ‘go for a walk’, whereas in earlier times and other societies walking was inherent in everyday activities. Yesterday I heard someone refer to the ‘Life be in it’ advertisements, a health-promotion campaign some decades ago. Here was the recognition that modern people needed to make the effort to go for a walk, beginning (in an age before remote controls) by walking across the room to turn the tv off.
Walking everyday you notice things. When I used to walk to the train station, going to work, I found that in the morning people would often greet me, but on the way home few people did so. Their energies or attention were more withdrawn. We notice when walking the dog that many people speak about the dog—it’s as if the dog provides a basis for meeting.
When we walk, there is a much greater chance too that we will notice the sky. Recently I wrote about looking up and the benefits of seeing ourselves within the vastness of the universe. Looking up, looking around, and looking down can be important for our mental health and these are parts of our walking, close to the earth and to our local community. https://www.tobefrank.com.au/reflections-on-text-and-context/1893/
Walking may follow a pathway or indeed create one. It is a feature of many classic landscape paintings to include some kind of path or road. The eye is drawn to where that road or path may lead and we are thereby invited to reflect: is this our pathway?
More broadly the ideas of walking and a pathway are metaphors for life and what it might mean for us. It’s an image used by many great leaders and thinkers, such as Nelson Mandela’s Long walk to freedom.
I think it is important to say that not all walking is about arriving somewhere. When we ‘go for a walk’, we may have a purpose such as to climb a bluff or reach a specific landmark; or we may just walk to the shops. Often, though, a walk is not about arriving somewhere. It may even be circular, ‘around the block’. These aspects too are metaphors for our lives. It is its own value and meaning, not always about achieving, arriving, gaining something. Still it is an affirmation of being and belonging, to the universe, to life.
There are two significant biblical ideas about walking that are significant for me.
One is the story in Luke’s Gospel chapter 24, of two dejected disciples who tramped along the road to Emmaus, trying to come to terms with their grief and despair, following the death of Jesus, the prophet they hoped would somehow save their nation from oppression and alienation. A stranger joined them, walking and talking with them along the way. Later, as they ate a meal with the stranger, they ‘saw’ that it was Jesus, risen from death, and though he disappeared from them they reflected: ‘didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us, along the way?’
There are many things that may come to us, as we walk along, and perhaps it is only later that we really see them and realise how important, even powerful, they are for us, giving us a new perspective on life.
This leads me to another often-quoted verse in the Hebrew scriptures, written by the prophet Micah. The question is what in fact is it that we are to do with our lives? What might our Creator expect or desire for us? The response offered is this: ‘doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God’. (Micah 6.8).
Like our everyday walking, this means a lot of things. Some strongly emphasis the justice element, others the kindness or mercy, but I think they belong together as a pathway and they invite us to see the Creator in this way.
In the very first part of the Bible there is a story of the Creator God taking a walk in the cool of the evening, seeking the company of the humans. We are invited to walk, humbly, with our God. This is a habit of life.