Walking

My Journal - Agatha Nolen

It was hot this Summer in Nashville, like miserably hot. I had stopped walking in my neighborhood because of the heat; even my gold retrievers thought the pavement was too hot for their paws. We’d play a bit in the backyard, but then they’d even beg to come back in the house.

Today it was a delightful 61 degrees in the early morning and my church has re-started a Walk in Love Gathering at Edwin Warner Park which is only minutes from my home here in Nashville.

It was lovely to take a stroll with a small group as the morning unfolded. First, we heard a few Celtic prayers and then for the next 15 minutes we walked in silence each meditating on the Scripture and asking how it was impacting me personally.

We stopped for a few minutes to share our stories and they were all different! We’d heard the same readings, but they meant something different to each one of us!

We continued on, chatting for the rest of the walk, turning to double back from a bird blind on the Hungry Hawk Trail.

I’d forgotten how nice it is to start the day with a walk with friends. In a March 2023 guest essay in the New York Times. Andrew McCarthy wrote, “Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking.”

McCarthy quotes writer Rebecca Solnit that walking “is how the body measures itself against the earth.” McCarthy adds, “and through such physical communion, walking offers up its crowning gift by bringing us emotionally, even spiritually, home to ourselves.”

I’m planning on doing more walking, not just to get from point A to point B, but more of a wandering, letting the earth rise up to meet my feet, and letting my head clear in the fresh air of fall.

Blessings, my friend
Agatha

(Photo of bird blind on Hungry Hawk Trail)