Eight years ago I was given the precious gift of roaming the British countryside for three weeks with my 3 adult daughters and my son-in-law. We wandered trails through the Cotswolds, the Malvern Hills, and the Lake District, each beautiful In their own distinctive landscapes.  This had been a trip we had hoped to take with my wife before her journey with glioblastoma left her too weak to travel.  As much as I treasured the time with my girls I was also looking for time alone to process my new season of life as a widower with God.

I discovered that the UK had created a guided 62 mile walk in the 1990’s retracing St. Cuthbert’s journey from  the Abbey in Melrose Scotland to the Celtic monastery on the tidal island of Lindisfarne in Northumbria.  What originated as an opportunity to be alone with God turned into 4 more rich days of walking unhurried with my adult children.

I was so moved by the beauty and the restorative pace of the walk that I returned the following year to walk St. Cuthbert’s Way alone in preparation for a weekend long retreat with the Northumbria Community focused on processing loss.  This was the community that created Celtic Daily Prayer which introduced me to  this poem:

Walk Slowly With Grief

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
It does not help the journey

Walk slowly, pausing often

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
Be not disturbed by memories
that come unbidden
Swiftly forgive and let
Unspoken words, unfinished conversations
be resolved in your memories

Be not disturbed
Be gentle with the one who walks with grief

If it is you, be gentle with yourself
Swiftly forgive, walk slowly,
Pause often,
Take time

Be gentle as you walk with grief

– Author Unknown

I could not have known in 2016 how precious these walks would become for me.  I returned in 2018 to walk St. Cuthbert’s with a community of pilgrims gathered through Coracle.  I experienced the joy of unhurried conversations and rhythms of prayer with kindred spirits all hungry to encounter Jesus.  In Kosuke Koyama’s Three Mile An Hour God he celebrates how God in love chooses to adjust His gait to our pace.  (I learned on this trip that walking 62 miles in 4 days is quite demanding for many and that 2.5 miles is more often the pace of love☺)

I’m learning to trust how much God delights in walking with us, sometimes just the two of us and sometimes in community.  In the Garden of Eden we see God walking in the cool of the evening inviting Adam and Eve to come to Him (Gen. 3:8)  As Genesis unfolds we see God walking with Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Isaac.  The psalmist assures us that He will walk with us protecting us even in the shadow of the valley of death.  (Psalm 23:4)

Jesus regularly invited others to be with Him and literally walk with Him.  I am particularly struck by Jesus inviting Peter to walk on the water with Him and Peter did long enough to get close enough to Jesus for Jesus to catch him when he started to sink.

I find imaginatively reflecting on Matthew 14 with all my senses to be quite compelling. Peter in walking with Jesus experienced the feeding of the 5,000, then this scene on the Sea of Galilee, followed by the healing of many in Gennesaret.  He was living in the reality of Jesus’s invitation in chapter 11 to come and walk with Him and work with Him (v. 29 The Message).  Peter was experiencing the overflow of Jesus’s  presence and power carrying him as he walked with Him.

Mark Buchanan has written a wonderfully winsome invitation to embrace the pace of loving attunement with Jesus titled Walking As A Spiritual Practice.  He shares transparently how walking has become a necessary choice to slow himself down from the constant striving  to produce.  As a Coracle fellow shared at a recent retreat, I too am a recovering producer.  I started running when I was 13 and picked up long distance cycling as an adult.  In both cases I found myself focused on how far and how quickly I could achieve.  Walking has helped me slow down.  It gives me the chance to attune relationally to Jesus, for my breath and heartbeat to synchronize with His.

I was tickled this summer when I discovered that the distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus is 7.5 miles, the same distance we were walking on St. Cuthbert’s each day.  It gave me a tangible, embodied sense of what it feels like to have an unhurried conversation with Jesus over the course of 2.5-3 hours.  I was amazed at how much ground we could cover physically and figuratively.  There was plenty of space to listen, converse, and enjoy God’s handiwork in silence.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship created guided audio walks during the pandemic that incorporate this flow of moving back and forth between attuning to God and attuning to His creation. ( Via Divina). These walks have become a rich resource for helping me develop habits of attunement for when I walk alone in silence and in community.  They are a wonderful model of how richly we can connect with Jesus over the course of an hour outdoors with Him.

I’m learning that walking with the intention of being present  with Jesus gives me the space and time I need to be seen and soothed by Him in the safety and security that Curt Thompson reminds us we so desperately need to nurture secure loving attachment with Abba, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  I’m struck again by how Jesus came alongside the disciples on the road to Emmaus and attuned to their grief and confusion before offering them hope and a deepened understanding of His presence and provision.

If you are like me it is a secure loving connection we long for and Jesus is eager to intimately walk with us in all the moments of our days.