walking meditation – Contemplative Seeing

The ego takes a walk

I decided that it was time to take my “real” camera with me on my walks so I could take “good” pictures. Well, someone else came along as well . . . my ego. Suddenly, I was humpfing over the flat midday light and fiddling with the depth of field. I was hunting, not being. And while I was at it, now that I had a camera, that freed up my phone for other purposes: I was checking my email on the trail.

Down, girl. Breathe.

Since I couldn’t resist the email, I learned, standing there on the side of the mountain, that a friend had died. Well, that changed things.

The camera was slung over my shoulder and forgotten. Phone stuck in a back pocket. Breath choked into a few guttural sobs. I looked around at God’s creation and gave thanks for all who are still here and for all who have ever walked the Miwok Trail and for all who walk here no longer.

Sometimes a walk is just a walk, sometimes it’s a marvel, and sometimes it’s a lesson.

What the rocks told me

As I was walking, I saw a wall of stone. It had grown in sober layers, lying politely horizontal for millennia as a slow accretion of sandstone built it massive and immoveable.

Then suddenly, with some violent burst upending the earth’s crust, part was thrust giddily skyward while part lodged deep into the unbreathing earth. The stone said, “Fear not: neither the heights nor the dive! Sometimes we are turned topsy turvy and then we either get a better view, or we learn surprising secrets. All shall be well.”

I saw another face of stone. This one said to me, “Aha! I see that your face, like mine, is deeply lined. We have seen life, you and I. Those smooth young stones, they don’t know what they’re in for. Don’t worry about the wrinkles. And all shall be well.”

I saw a third wall of stone. This one had toppled flat and become a sort of natural paving. It was worn, barely visible. I squinted to make it out, a fossil of its former grandeur. The stone said, “Do not pity me in my humility. All creatures who pass must walk on me and most don’t even notice, unless they stumble. But I get to feel the weight of their sorrow and the spirit of their joy. I have become the Earth. And all manner of thing shall be well.”

So that’s where St. Julian of Norwich got it, that anchoress sealed away in the walls of her church: the stones told her. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

Sitting with a sister creature

I was walking along the Tennessee Valley Trail trying out James Finley’s suggestion for mystic contemplation, inhaling the Universe’s goodness with “I love you” and exhaling back my own “I love you.” I glanced down and there in the center of the path stretched the tiniest garter snake I had ever seen. She did what snakes usually do: bolted for the grass on the side of the path. But then, she stopped. She just stayed there on side of the trail. I stood for a long time, watching her. Then I wondered if she would mind if I sat down.

I sat down. The snake stayed. There we were, two sister creatures, two vestiges of God’s creation, as St. Bonaventure says. We enjoyed the same sun on our backs. We both put our faces to the breeze. The snake slowly waved her head back and forth. I wondered what garter snakes eat when they are too tiny to eat a mouse. I exhaled, “I love you.” She exhaled, “I love you, too.”

I stuck my foot out from where I was sitting and took this picture just so you could see how tiny this snake was.

It was a busy day on the trail. People tramped by talking politics and relationships. The snake and I just stayed.

Finally, slowly, slowly, she crept into the grass; so slowly that I had to watch for a while to see her progress. I couldn’t actually see her move. And then, with a sudden silent whoosh, she was gone.

And I continued on my way.

Starting the walk

What happens when we start to look at the space between?

On my first day at Richard Rohr’s Living School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I sat in a circle of strangers (soon friends) as everyone described his or her contemplative practice. We had yoga, Centering Prayer, chanting, sitting meditation, surfing, even drinking coffee, but when we came to John from New Zealand, he said that when he does a walking meditation he tries to look at the space between the branches instead of the branches themselves. That was it. One sentence. Ah, thought I, what we called in art school the “negative space.”

So, out I was on my daily walk near my home in Northern California and I snapped a cellphone photo of an old favorite dog-walking path to send to our daughters in New York City. It was an ordinary photo of an ordinary, if beautiful, day, meant only to document a place and time.

As I walked on, I decided to try John’s method of looking at the space between the objects. I peered at the patterns between the branches. I inhaled the air I shared with the shrubby landscape. I gazed deeply into, well, what I usually think of as “nothing.”

And suddenly I was drinking a deeper world. I had tumbled into a liminal space. The earth was connected to me and I to it in a profoundly new way. I was on a different walk. I had found my practice.

I wanted to see if I still saw what I thought I had seen once I was off the trail, so I took a few pictures on the way back.

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