Faith on Foot
Matthew Bullimore
One of the consequences of the lockdowns has been an upsurge in the number of people out walking. It is a good way to exercise and, because we can exercise together, it is one of the few ways that we can meet others (socially-distanced, of course). You will have noticed, too, that it has become the means by which pastors are able to shepherd us. They take us for a walk.
Walking has many benefits. We might even go as far as to say that it fundamentally changes our experience of living.
They say that walkers live longer, and not just because of the health benefits. Walkers live longer because things take longer on foot. Time slows down. There seems to be more of it altogether. We notice things that we wouldn’t see if we were rushing around. It grants us a heightened awareness of our surroundings. Walkers find time to listen. That might be to a companion but it might also be listening to the sounds of our immediate environment. And so, overall, walking seems to intensify our experience of living in the world.
Thinkers across the centuries have often been walkers, professing that the rhythms of walking somehow aid the mind to find its own rhythm. Thinking takes time and time is precisely what walking gives us.
Walking also makes us aware of our bodies. We feel our bodies loosen and warm up. We will feel them tire. We are aware of the weather, the heat or the cold. And we might begin to notice when we hunger or thirst. Walking reminds us that we are physical creatures. We are embodied. Out walking we begin to see how our bodies deliver the world to us through our senses. But we also begin to see that our bodies are part of a rich and diverse world. We don’t float free from the world but are part of it.
Setting out on foot is also a spiritual experience. Like all forms of prayer, walking focusses our attention and centres us in our bodies. It sets our minds free to see things in a new light. Walking is an exercise in awareness. And when we become more aware then things are more present to us, whether that is our immediate environment, our bodies, our thoughts, our sense of self or our relationships. In walking we become aware of whom it is we are carrying with us and whom it is who carries us. And through all of these presences, we can become aware of the presence of the One who always accompanies us.
Jesus was a walker. As a child he fled to Egypt and journeyed to the Temple and back. As an adult he was peripatetic, a man with nowhere to lay his head. For it was in walking that he encountered others. It was walking that allowed him to accompany; to be a companion. Soon we will remember his walk along the Via Dolorosa and we will accompany him. But every day, we should be attentive to him beside us, learning to see what he sees, being thankful for what he is thankful for, learning to accompany those he accompanies.
