For you have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living (Psalm 56:12).
During the warm months here in Bluffton I enjoy a good evening walk - usually before sunset, near the school and suburb where I live and work. There's a park nearby and it's good to see the children playing. There's a factory, too, humming and clanging and beeping, with orange lights that fill the warm, friendly summer twilight. I pass the old ball diamond where my little league team used to practice. If I keep on straight for about half a mile I'll be at my mother's apartment. If I turn right I'll pass the elementary school and some familiar teenage streets. A summer walk is good for the heart. A spring walk lifts the spirit. An autumn walk grounds a man.
Thoreau believed that Walkers were a special breed. He called Walkers "a fourth estate, outside Church and State and People." The freedom, leisure, and independence which are the capital of the Walking profession cannot be bought - they come only by the grace of God. "It requires a dispensation from heaven to be a Walker. You must be born into the family of Walkers." My work requires that I find time to myself. A lot of time. I'm at the beck and call of my customers 24/7. My phone is (almost) never off, which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of my day-to-day existence. But a good walk helps me put the work out of my mind. And when I'm really in the spirit I'll go for a saunter. These don't happen quite as much, but these are the sorts of walks Thoreau is really talking about. You get off the road, away from the sidewalks (and the phone), and you walk wherever you please - through woods and fields and over hills, free from the world. If you feel tired, you lie down on some soft grass or against a suitable tree and take a nap. You lose track of time. I'm certain that Jesus took some walks like this, and John the Baptist, too.
According to Thoreau, the word Sauntering is:
[B]eautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Saint-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.
Kings and rulers (and Satan) all have seats and thrones. The Jesus of the Gospels did a lot of walking. He walked into the wilderness where he met the devil, walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, walked into synagogues, walked up the mount where he preached, walked through crowds in Gergesenes, in Capernaum, in Cana and "all the cities and villages" (Matthew 9:35). John the Baptist was a traveling preacher, a rover, he walked the barren wilderness of Judah and lived an ascetic life, baptizing people in river water and shouting "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"
Today is the 7th day of Advent, which according to everyone, ironic and/or otherwise, is about preparation. This time of year, walking requires some prep, some layers, some heavy socks, a hat and a scarf. But it's worth it. And if you run, put on your gear and hit the road. I've been on a handful of Advent runs this month. Some short, some longer. I don't often stop and take pictures but there's something about running down an old stretch of railroad (abandoned, I think, the one pictured above). The crossties are level with the ground and green moss and weeds grow up around the tracks. It's a soft place to run. And it's narrow and straight. It guides you, almost takes each step for you. This is how some holiness preachers would describe entire sanctification.
You won't find sanctification on an Advent run, but there may be a benediction out there, in the cold, in the glow of cheap Christmas lights. I read this once: "The ancients believed the Earth was the center of the universe. We believe that we are." A good run or a cold walk under a dark, expansive Advent sky cures the soul of this notion. "Make His paths straight." Go now, you pilgrim, you Holy Lander. Go get some repentance. I'll spare you the inspiration porn and tell you what I told you last year: You better check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.
I'll leave you with this passage from Thoreau:
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.
I think I'll stick that atop the page. Maybe give the whole blog a little facelift. Thanks for reading, Holy Landers.
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