"Walking as a Spiritual Practice"

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Graham (who is actually a member here) posted this on his blog. I thought it had some good observations.

The best walks are those where one does not pay any attention to their thoughts at all. To meditate on the colour of the sky, the technology one has (hopefully) unplugged from, or any noise is all fine and well. But meditation means to be fixed upon particulars, thereby removing the wholeness of the practice of walking. Walking remains whether one passes by a tree, a dog, or an automobile. Walking is not found in any of the objects one comes across within the practice, but instead, it is found in its very transience - the detachment from those objects. Walking must be taken for what it is, that is to say, motion, in which neither internal nor external stimuli cause one to stumble. This is what it means to walk in contemplation.

Again, it is not thinking in itself while one walks that is problematic, but paying attentionto one's thoughts. If the body is in motion, so too should be the mind. Abilities like reconsideration are appropriate for sitting down, but never walking.

The Spirit of God that hovered over the waters when the world began, as recorded in Genesis 1.2, is the same wind that surrounds me today. I am aware of God in and through the wind as it commits to a makeshift dance. I may feel cold, distracted, agitated even, but God has found me in the moment, and in a way so irrefutable unlike most other moments.

When one walks alone, it can be comfortable to fall into a solipsistic universe. I choose when I leave the house; I decide when to return; I know which path I most desire to take, etc. Avoid eye contact and communication with others as best you can, but eventually, a bell from a tower so high will toll, and upon hearing it, you will realize that hiding is a great mistake. Even if you deny others to your utmost ability, this in no way indicates that they will deny you in the same manner. This facade can shatter at the simple utterance of "hello." You have been found; your existence has been affirmed.

[Ed Hurst]

Graham has said he's not into the heart-led stuff we teach, so it's no criticism to note that he approaches it without quite getting there with this quote.

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YMMV, as the saying goes, but it spoke to me, to a degree. I think because he writes a lot like Chesterton, who I believe was heart-led. I haven't read him in a while so it may be my recollection talking.

[Ed Hurst]

A lot of people use other terms to indicate heart-led.

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A lot of people use other terms to indicate heart-led.

It's quotes like these that really make me think he was a different breed. I get the sense he struggled with his upbringing and surroundings but was limited to English (which I believe he mastered) in expressing his disdain.

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

[Ed Hurst]

Creative artists operate in a different world in the first place. They have already found themselves in the midst of a conflict that fuels their art. Those are good quotations.