Tag: walking

Companions on the Path

Labyrinths are everywhere. Checkout the Labyrinth Locator at https://labyrinthlocator.com/locate-a-labyrinth. Within fifty miles of the Lehigh Valley there are listed at least 79 labyrinths.. Not all are open to the public and many are canvas and indoors. But 79!

I used to walk the labyrinth at my Christ Church parish in Reading at least weekly. We opened our canvas 11 circuit labyrinth weekly on Friday afternoon for anyone to walk. Children, adults, people who were curious about this strange design we offered, people who came with questions, people who came with burdens they would let go of on the path. Once there came a couple who were obviously in distress. The woman came in first and asked how to walk the labyrinth ‘correctly’. Then her partner entered the room with its floor entirely covered by the Chartres labyrinth and saw her walking the first yards of the path. He declined my invitation to enter the path and stood, watching his partner — each step seeming as though she was bearing a 50 pound backpack. When she reached the middle she started to cry, She still hadn’t noticed that her partner had entered the room and was watching. As she cried his face became an echo of hers — tears filling his eyes. Suddenly he went into the labyrinth and walked toward her, ignoring the circuits — just walking straight to the center. When he got to her, she looked up and saw him and both embraced. He and she both cried and as they held each other one could see both of their lips form the words “I’m sorry”. They eventuallywalked out hand in hand.

I have moved back to the Reading area to a retirement community. It’s been a week and a half since our move and we are slowly finding places for our ‘stuff’ in our new apartment. One of the things my husband would not part with was a wooden finger labyrinth that you ‘walk’ with your finger, eyes closed, in a reflection of the walking the labyrinth experience. We apparently both miss walking labyrinths.

I remember that on the PSU-Berks campus there was an outside labyrinth — not far from where we live now. I need to find out if it is still there. And then I will go and walk it. Labyrinth magic. I am ready.

On the path,

Jane

Elfin Magic

Elfin Magic

I had started my walk in a nearby park in a rather serious mood. My head down and engaged in thoughts triggered by a podcast playing in my ear, I didn’t notice the few others who were on the trail even though I only wear one earpod when I walk so I don’t miss birdsongs or the crunch crunch crunch of a fellow walker coming up behind me.

I was well into the two mile walk when I started to notice something odd with the trees along the path. At first I thought the gleaming little Christmas ball was the only one and only on that tree. Nope. When I noticed a third tree with a shiny ornament, I put the podcast on pause and the earpod in my pocket. There were more ornaments but only one per tree.

One on the next tree on my right. And the next one on my left. And the next. And the next. On some trees the ornament was hanging out in plain sight. On others there seemed to be no ornament. But when I looked more curiously every tree along my path had a ball hung somewhere within it. There were small round balls of red, white, green, silver, and even black. Some were not much bigger than a grape while others were the size of a navel orange.

I smiled then laughed out loud as each shiny ball reflecting sunlight caught my eye. Branches bare of leaves made identification something that will require waiting until spring, but no matter. I was not looking for leaves. Rather, I was looking for this winter “fruit” — these ornaments.

I had come to my walk in a familiar park, Louise Moore Park in Northampton County, Pennsylvania (just a few minutes drive from my house). The paths in the Park are neither fancy nor wild. They amble through fields. Some are mowed to ankle depth while others have been left wild for birds to nest and scavenge. Along some sections of the path are groves of 8 or 10 mature copper beeches, maples, oaks, and pines. I wondered who had taken the time to offer these gifts along the path. It wasn’t the rangers and it likely wasn’t a paid worker. The balls were not hung with panache or professionally placed. Some were tied to branches with unraveling yet colorful ribbon, some with sparkly twisted pipe cleaners, others hung on a colored metal hook that contrasted with the color of the Christmas ball it attached to the tree. Someone had anonymously hung the path with shiny bright objects that could not be missed and that made smiles emerge and childlike delight fill hearts that needed a bit of joy.

“Have you noticed the Christmas balls in the trees?” I asked an older couple holding hands.

“Oh yes, aren’t they wonderful,” the woman said. “We were just wondering how they came to be here. Who did this?”

I smiled as I said, “I think it is the elves who decorated our path.”

“Oh yes! Isn’t that something! Elves!” And she smiled as she and her husband nodded to each other.

Later, a jogger approached, head down, concentrating on the path ahead with headphones sealing out any other sound. I smiled and asked if she had noticed the decoration. She slowed slightly, took off her headphones and looked quizzically at me. I repeated my question.

“Oh, yes. They’re cheery aren’t they?” she said. Putting her headphones back on, she smiled and waved goodbye to me.

Yes, they are cheery. I needed “cheery” today. \Others may have needed it as well. And for this simple bit of good cheer I thank the Elves who took time to make this writer’s day brighter. It was a simple thing. Something that made a difference . . . at least to me. Thank you so very, very much. Now, I’m thinking about what small Elvish thing I can do to make tomorrow a day with good cheer and smiles. . . Suggestions invited below in comments — don’t be shy if you have an idea! And be an Elf!

Workouts Are OK; But Walking Awakens My Soul

Shoot! Another day that I promised to workout is sliding into dusk. I don’t want to move from my house to go to the gym. It is just 10 minutes down the road, but I would need to climb into workout gear, grab my water bottle, car keys, yoga mat, towel and drive. Then there is the 30 minutes of aerobics (on the bike or eliptical). Then 30 minutes on the mat doing yoga stretches for flexibility and strength. I would rather just walk outside. . . so before it gets any darker, I’ll grab my hiking poles (a Christmas gift from Bill) and walk for 40 minutes.

I will write when I return and let you know how my mood has changed with my walk. . .

After my walk . . . I feel elated, awake even though it is now dark outside. I love walking now that my hip is healed. I can walk easily and without a limp, now. The most I’ve walked since my November surgery is 3.5 miles so I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m ready to think seriously about the Camino again.

I walked the Camino de Santiago in 2008 — three years after my first knee replacement and had no trouble at all. And it was life changing for me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago). I want to walk it (a portion of its 500 miles) again before I die. I would walk about 150 kilometers. Walking 100 km entitles walkers to an indulgence — yes, there are still such things given with the blessing of the Pope. At least one no longer has to buy them — just walk a portion of the Camino. But I would walk it for the experience — and although it would be different than the first walk, I suspect it would be no less amazing.

I am learning Spanish after 50 years away from Miss Cristoforo’s class at Scott High school. I am surprised at how much I remember — it comes back. And now because it isn’t an academic requirement but rather a challenging thing I want to (in order to communicate with the folks who come to our food cupboard every month), I am loving it. I hope anyone I try to communicate with in my “second tongue” will forgive me for the multiple errors I make in grammar and vocabulary. . .

Wow! I’ve wandered away from the topic of Walking or Working Out. But I am glad I didn’t sit out my walk today. It was worth it. And each step means I’m a bit closer to the Camino de Santiago.

We Are Pilgrims

What matters most on your journey is how deeply you see, how attentively you hear, how richly the encounters are felt in your heart and soul.

                                                                      –Phil Cousineau in The Art of Pilgrimage

I’ll be offering a workshop on Pilgrimage at the Center for Spiritual Awakening in Allentown PA October 6.  Yes, preparation for any presentation is takes effort, energy and time.  But when I talk about Pilgrimage, I find myself energized and excited to be introducing this spiritual practice to those who may soon be taking their first pilgrimage.

Dirty Feet

My first “formal” pilgrimage — a journey that I named pilgrimage before I embarked on it — was in 2008 on a portion of El Camino de Santiago with 14 youth and 3 other youth leaders.  I wasn’t a typical Camino pilgrim — or so I thought.  At 59 I had already had a (successful!) knee replacement, was in reasonably good physical condition, enjoyed being with teens (as a chaplain at an Episcopal girls preK-12 school, I’d had lots of exposure and loved it).  But I wondered and worried in the days preceding our flight.  Was I too old?  Would I be able to keep up?  Could I stay awake late enough into the night to keep track of the few who might try to sneak out for the freely available alcohol in “no set drinking age” Spain?

Nothing I worried about showed up on Pilgrimage (of course!).  Instead, Pilgrimage changed my life.  It has become a mission for me to share the blessings of pilgrimage with as many persons as I can: in my classes, in workshops, in conversations, in homilies.  Pilgrimage challenges the life we live so often on auto-pilot.  In a new place (whether a nearby trail, a journey to a historical site or one important to your family heritage, or a trip across the Pond to the Camino), old habits don’t fit.

We are challenged by new circumstances, difficulties to overcome, even the challenge of leaving behind your earbuds and iPhone or getting used to walking in silence.  Finding ourselves experiencing something different, we can choose to look at such challenges as torments — or chances to stretch ourselves and learn something.

We can try out a new way of seeing ourselves and the world we walk in — looking at everything that happens to us as having meaning — learning to see with the eyes of the heart as St. Benedict would say.  For instance, I learned on my pilgrimage that I could see everything that happened on my path as a metaphor for my life and as a possibility for enlightenment and growth.  The heightened awareness of being in a new place among people who spoke a different language and offered different food (octopus?  it’s really delicious!) made me aware of how back home I often preferred to stay in my comfortable routine and avoided intermingling with those whose accents or language were difficult to understand.  No more because of my pilgrimage — I am more open to difference — curious rather than shy or avoidant.

So much changed for me back home after my Pilgrimage.  I was more trusting that God was present in challenges and I was not living my life unsupported.  I was more willing to face challenges with the expectation that I would somehow grow through facing them.  I was less fearful of “what might happen” and more trusting that whatever might happen I was not alone.  I knew (and know) that I am truly loved by God.  I sense more keenly that only a thin veil divides our world from heaven.

There is so much more to say about Pilgrimage, but dinner is ready and I am ready for it.  So maybe some future blog will contain some of the rest of my Pilgrimage Truths. :^)
In the meantime, you might meditate on Kierkegaard’s admonition:

               Above all, do not lose your desire to walk . . .I have walked myself into                            my best thoughts.

Staying Grounded in a World of Despair

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I am in need of peace and hope. No, I am not in despair, but there are times in this chaos of 2018 in America when it seems that all that was familiar is being dismantled or hatefully deconstructed.  And what I value in life: kindness, honesty, caring actions towards others, strength of purpose, wisdom . . . these things are being devalued, tossed away, seen as weak and worthless.

It is when I realize I am on the edge of the dark abyss that I go to my Poetry and Inspiration digital file.  When I taught, I always opened my class with 5-8 minutes of silent centering/meditation/ breathwork and then (to end the silence) read one of many poems that I had collected over the years and that fit the day’s class content.  One of them was Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Today is a day on the edge of the abyss, and so I go happily to walk in today’s rain shower and feel the cleansing and peace of just being alive.   I rest in the grace of the world and am free.  

Blessings and hope and peace.

Jane +