Having Time for A Walk

Spring was pressing in, the air just on the very cusp of warmth, the day shining, the sky blue.

In my office, the emails had been sent, phone calls made, and scriptures and commentaries reviewed for the upcoming sermon.  I stared at my twitter feed, open and streaming.  I looked at my email, still the same as it was five minutes before.  I looked through the window of my office at the day, alive and bright.

It was two hours until my next meeting.  Two hours that I did not need to spend on a laptop, immersed in the dickering whirl of an unreal world.

And so I closed the netbook, and left a little note on my office door, and out to my car I went.  From there, it was ten minutes to the river, over the gorgeous country roads that surround the little burg of Poolesville.

I tiptoed my Prius down the dirt road to the riverside, a road deeply furrowed and pitted from a long and rough winter.  I finally reached the river's edge, and parked in a puddle-speckled lot by an open field.

I took the few steps to the old canal towpath, slowed my breathing as I looked out across the Potomac, flowing fat from a rain-rich Spring.  Life was just coming into the trees.  In a few weeks, that path will be shadowed by a new canopy of delicate green.

I set a timer to put a boundary on my meditation, and began to walk, trying to center myself to an easy pace and to my breathing.  

But my brain was a-scatter with thoughts, and the life and movement around me kept stirring me to stop and observe.  The wind danced and rustled through the trees.  In the abandoned canal, splashes came ahead of me as I walked, as turtle after turtle plunged from their logs to escape this meditative interloper.  Some did not, and simply peered at me dispassionately from the warmth of their perches.

To my left, two trees caught my eye.  One, a sycamore, white as bone.  Another, a--darned if I know.  But the sycamore had grown around a large branch of another, and as I passed, it looked as if one tree was reaching into the heart of the other.  I stopped and marveled at that, and took a mediocre picture.

Still I walked, and I felt no more centered.  Some days are like that, when the focused breathing and the walking and the repetition of an inner prayer are not enough to still my nattering ego-self.

So I changed things up.

As I walked, I sang. A little tentatively at first, because, well, we don't generally do that in public.  But the path was empty in the middle of a weekday, and so I let my voice out a little.  Then a little more.  As I walked, I began with a version of the Lord's Prayer, a tune I alone sing, one I created years ago.  From that, I sang old gospel hymns and songs, one after the other, as they came into my head.

To the rhythm of my walking and my pace, I sang.

I did this to the point where I turned back, and halfway on my return.

When I stopped singing, I felt it, that blessed listening stillness of soul.  The trees moved slowly in the wind, and the birds cried out, and the shadows of clouds raced ahead of me like children playing on the path.

All of creation felt, in that moment, as you feel when your loved one comes in close.  But they stop, lingering, their face just a hair's breadth from your own.  You are not touching, not quite.  But you feel their closeness, more deeply than you would if they just up and kissed you.

It was a good walk.

Syncretism, Style, and Substance

Over the last half-year, I've been teaching a monthly class on styles and approaches to prayer. After sputtering a bit at the beginning...folks were just too full up on church on Sunday after worship/Bible study...I moved it to mid-week on Wednesday. Since then, it's been cozy and pleasant, as I've explore some of the classic techniques of Christian prayer with some of the dear saints of my church.

We've been following an online Upper Room guide to ancient forms of prayin', and it's been generally helpful. We've done lectio divina. We've done Ignatian prayer. We've even popped into the sanctuary and used the stained glass windows as a focal point for icon-based contemplation. Yeah, John Calvin wouldn't be pleased, but hey...if contemplating Christ is wrong, I don't wanna be right. A symbol is a symbol is a symbol, be it word or image. If you worship the image and not the thing it points to, you're an idolater. If you worship the text and not the thing it points to, you're an idolater. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Yesterday, though, we did something a teesny bit different. I loaded up my little group into my minivan and went down to the C&O Canal Towpath for some walking meditation. It's a technique I've used for years, but it's not one I learned in church. It is, instead, something I did naturally. I then discovered that it was, well, a thing Buddhists do. In particular, it's the schtick of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn. It's a simple exercise in mindfulness and self-emptying, and particularly useful in stilling the anxieties and petty demons that can beset humankind. You don't fret about tomorrow, about things that might be. You don't anguish over the pains of yesterday. It places you squarely in the now, and at some fleeting, ephemeral moments, in the great peace that can be found in the Eternal Now of the Kingdom.

Having read up on it and practiced it over a decade or so, I find it's completely simpatico with a Christ-centered faith. It is simply a style of prayer. There are, of course, Christians who would be stressed by such a thing. Learning a prayer style? From a Buddhist? Outlandish! That's a step down the slippery slope of syncretism!

But focusing on form and technique rather than intent and purpose is the dangerous ground on which a Pharisee builds his home. If the purpose is deepening an awareness of our Maker, opening ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit, and finding a source of strength for our Christian journey, then it isn't to be feared. It is no more antithetical to Christ than pressing one's hands together in prayer.

I hear Buddhists do that too.