Years ago a friend told me that she often pays attention to the way a person walks. She described the way a few of our mutual acquaintances walked and what each person’s pattern of walking revealed. Since then, I too notice the way people walk and even more importantly, I have learned to pay attention to my patterns of walking. Walking has become a spiritual practice for me, and I find that changing my way of walking opens my heart to deep listening, creates space for gentleness with myself and others, and allows me to receive ever more fully God’s gentle and merciful love.
It turns out the Bible is also interested in the way a person walks often using walking as a metaphor for the spiritual life. Moses tells the Israelites,
You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you.
Deuteronomy 5:33
St. Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh.
I say, then: walk by the Spirit and there is no likelihood of carrying out the craving of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16
Paul writes that walking according to the flesh leads to works of the flesh but walking by the Spirit brings the fruit of the Spirit. Paul’s contrast between works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit is intentional. Works are the products of our efforts separated from God. These works bring disharmony and disorder with ourselves, others, and God. By contrast, fruit is not made by us but grows in us when conditions are favorable, when we step back and make space for the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. Though God is the source of the fruit, we are called to cooperate with God by prayerfully walking by the Spirit.
I begin my workday by making a list on a notecard of the tasks I hope to accomplish that day. After writing my tasks on the front of my notecard, I turn this card over and write down Paul’s list of qualities characterizing the fruit of the Spirit:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Galatians 5:22
Paul’s list of qualities characterizing the fruit of the Spirit is a source of meditation for me. These qualities are meant to shape our interactions with others and they are also qualities that describe how God relates to us. Writing them on the back of my task notecard reminds me to walk by the Spirit, to do what I must do in a way that nurtures the fruit of God’s Spirit within me.
While each quality of the fruit of the Spirit is significant, gentleness is the quality I try to nurture by being mindful of the way I walk. There are certain walks I take each day that provide a time of mindfulness for me. When I walk from the parking lot into work, I try to use that time as a space of openness to all that lies around me. I have no control over most of the things I observe, the weather of the day, the way the light shines, how the season of the year paints the landscape around me, or the variety of birds I might see and hear along the way, yet the beauty and wildness of the things I do not control, frees me from my preoccupations and worries. Somehow in this gentle, receptive walk into work, I often become aware of all the people of the St. Vincent community, people of both the past and the present, people serving the community in various ways, the monks, the parishioners, the students, and the faculty. I am part of this community of people learning together how to walk in the ways of God.
My walk from my office to the classroom is another opportunity to be gentle with myself, to let there be space for God’s nurturing presence, and to allow stress, tension, and demands fall away. This gentle walk allows me to quietly reflect on the significance of the material the students and I will discuss during the next seventy-five minutes and to enter the spaciousness of this time with openness to both the students’ learning and mine.
Spirituality involves living what we believe. It is both outer and inner, a matter of the heart, the body, and the mind. In the article, “Be Gentle,” Wendy Wright says,
The human heart is made by and for the God of Love and is created to beat in rhythm with the divine heartbeat.
Wendy Wright
Weavings
The health of our souls is reflected in our actions in the world and mindfulness of our actions in the world can nurture the spaciousness we need to heal, to listen, to believe, and to allow our hearts to beat in rhythm with God’s. Walking gently, is one way I remember to let Jesus’s gentle, humble heart shape my own.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Matthew 11:28-30
