May 3, 2015--An Altar in the World: The Practice of Walking on the Earth - Groundedness

Rev. Tom Ott

"A riot is the language of the unheard." MLK 1968. Recovering the spiritual practice of walking on the earth may be next right step forward. Here are some reflections on the possibilities:

Matthew 6: 25-33

Some of my favorite memories from childhood are my overnight visits with nana and pop-pop Savage. They lived in half of a twin home in Mountainville on the south side of Allentown. Back then, South Fountain Street was a quiet residential neighborhood anchored by an ugly modern church building at the intersection of Emmaus Avenue and an underground reservoir at the other end of the street, higher up the south mountain. There wasn’t a lot of through traffic on South Fountain Street; mostly just neighbors heading off to work in the morning and returning home in the early evening. Occasionally there would be a delivery truck bringing milk or delivering parcels, but on most days there were more people walking on the sidewalk than driving in the street.

On most of my visits Nana and I would go for mid-morning walks together. After pop-pop went off to work and the breakfast dishes were washed and put away, before we got into any serious card games of “go fish” or board games of Parcheesi, we would head up to the street for a stroll around the neighborhood. Inevitably we would stop and visit with neighbors who were out digging in their gardens or sweeping off their sidewalks and Nana would embarrass me by showing off her grandson and remarking about how much I’ve grown or bragging about my latest elementary band concert or little league ball game.

What I remember most about walking with nana was the pacing. We were never in a hurry to get anywhere. It wasn’t a power walk for cardio-vascular conditioning. It was more of a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood. We would venture out to discover what there was to see. Eventually we would head up to the reservoir, which was nothing more than a grassy field with lots of ventilation pipes sticking up out of the ground, but knowing that there was a huge cistern filled with water right beneath my feet was intriguing to me as a child. Without a stop watch or a prescribed course, we were free to take whatever detour presented itself and linger as long as we wanted. There was time to search for the perfect walking stick, pick up and examine the colors and textures of rocks before chucking them deep into the woods, admire the flowers and tree blossoms and to catch up with neighbors we encountered along the way.

I don’t remember the particulars of any conversations that we had during our mid-morning walks together, but I remember the experience. I remember feeling included in nana’s world when we were out walking together. I wasn’t just a visitor in that Mountainville neighborhood, I felt connected. I had a place there beside my nana as we strolled through the neighborhood.

This week when David Sweitzer sent out an email about the bread he was baking on Friday, he shared a story about walking with a guide in Nepal. The guide had accompanied David and some friends who had gone hiking in the Himalayans and carried their supplies. There aren’t many roads in Nepal and many areas are only supplied by Sherpa carrying loads weighing as much as their own body weight on their backs. David remembered how attentive their guide had been to them during their walk together. He frequently encouraged them to slow down their pace as they climbed in the high mountain altitude. He accompanied them all the way of their trek and walked back to the airport with them, refusing to leave until he had seen them safely on their way even though he faced a week long walk to get back to Kathmandu for his next job.

There is something about walking that connects us more deeply to each other and the world around us. This past week when David learned of the earthquake that devastated Nepal and caused so much death and destruction, the tie that he still felt to the guide that had accompanied them compelled David to respond to the crisis in Nepal. All of the proceeds from Friday’s bread bake were dedicated to an NGO that has a good history of working effectively in Nepal. If you would like to contribute to David’s Nepal relief effort there are special offering envelops in the pews. You can make your check out to the church and mark the memo line for Nepal Relief.

We don’t spend very much time walking anymore. Most of the time we get into our cars and speed across town to get to wherever we want to go. Even when we travel out of town, we roll up the windows get on the highway and speed across country as quickly as we can. We don’t really see any of the places we pass bye. We don’t appreciate the beauty of the countryside. We don’t take in the unique character of the communities we pass through. We don’t enter into conversation with anyone we encounter along the way. Most of the time we rush from one place to next without noticing much of anything along the way.

But Jesus walked everywhere, and most of the stories that we have about his life are stories about encounters he had with people he met along the way: blind Bartimaeus calling out to him as he passed by, the woman with a flow of blood to reached out and touched his robe, a tax collector named Zacchaeus who climbed a tree to get a better view of Jesus. They weren’t people that Jesus had appointments to see. None of them were on his itinerary. They weren’t people he had intentionally set out to visit. They were all people he encountered while he was out walking. Most of the lessons that Jesus taught were not sermons carefully crafted in his study. They were observations he made about the things he notice while walking through the Galilean countryside:

“…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? …Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Barbara Brown Taylor points out that, “While many of (Jesus’) present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it. Jesus was a walker, not a rider. He took his sweet time.”

More and more that feels like a spiritual practice that we need to recover. If we have any hope of ever living peacefully with each other in a multi-racial, multi ethnic world, then we are going to have to spend a significant amount of time walking with each other, strolling through the different neighborhoods we live in, opening ourselves to the detours, discoveries and chance encounters we might have along the way.

In 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking in Grosse Pointe, Mich., made an observation that we have continued to ignore at our own peril. He said, "I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard...What is it America has failed to hear? ... It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity."

Instead of driving through the blighted neighborhoods of Baltimore, Ferguson, and New York City, and even Battle Creek, we are going to have to get out our cars and take to the streets. We’re going to have to recover the ancient practice walking together and slowing ourselves down to a pace where we can actually talk with each other and learn each other’s stories. Instead of waiting for rioting and looting and then labeling people thugs, we’ll have to walk together through the neighborhoods that they live in and listen to the frustrations of the chronically unemployed, get in touch with the hopelessness of people who feel they have no opportunity of improving their lot and hear the resentments of those who are target by police for pat downs and searches because of the neighborhoods they live in or the color of their skin.

Something happens when we get out of our cars and walk. We get oriented to the world around us. We notice things that take time to see. And we become more accommodating when we walk together. We match our pace to suit the people we are accompanying. We look each other in the eye, talk more authentically and care more deeply. We get close enough to really see each other, hear each other, smell each other and touch each other. Walking together is a much more intimate experience than getting into our cars and driving to visit each other.

And walking takes time. It is a spiritual practice that slows us down long enough to be present with each other, to be attentive, to explore each other’s neighborhoods, and to care more deeply about each other’s welfare. Some of Jesus’ most significant encounters happened while he was walking through the foothills of Galilee. Perhaps the same will be true for us as we resume the ancient practice of walking on the earth together through all the different neighborhoods of Battle Creek: Urbandale, Washington Heights, Park Hill, Freedom Acres, Merritt Woods, Garrison Hills, Piper Park, Post-Addition, Springfield, Prairie View, West Lake, Riverside, Cascade Hills, Windamere, Minges, Pheasant Run.
Walking on the earth is the spiritual practice that grounds us and makes it possible for us to feel connected, included, at home on each other’s streets. Amen.