“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is the third jaunt of the Life of the Day series here on Contemplify.
So for those just jumping in, there is this contemplative rhythm in some monasteries of the Christian tradition called the Divine Office…or the Liturgy of the Hours. Today’s episode is the third of a series I’ll be doing on the reimagining of the Liturgy of the Hours into my own personal reflective interpretations as a contemplative in the world. The intention is to mark each of the Hours but in a form very different from their regular practice behind monastery walls. In other words, this is what a contemplative rhythm looks like in my particular life.
My third reinterpretation I’ll be exploring the divine hour called ‘None’ (or Sext, but Sext seems to have taking on a life of its own meaning the parlance of our times), so for the sake of us all, here is how it is traditionally defined:
none
/nən/a service forming part of the Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, traditionally said (or chanted) mid afternoon.
What else can I say about the hour of None, let’s go for a walk shall we?
The body was not built for the office life. My body is underused at the office, whether I am standing at my desk or compacting my muscles, joints and ligaments into a rigid chair. There is a soulless echo in every office. The tightness confines me to click-clack on a keyboard so I can fire off an email before the next important meeting. Then it happens. My body can’t take it anymore, I take a deep breath, grab my coat and head for the back gate. Like a prisoner or schoolboy seeing natural life unfolding just beyond the gate, I quicken my step. I open the gate and see the Sandia mountains to the east. Zen Master Dogen’s words come to mind,
There is a mountain walk and a mountain flow. Because the blue mountains are walking, they are constant. Their walk is swifter than the wind.
So I walk with the mountains. The refuge of the mountains over my shoulder as I turn out down the street keep my honest about how big my problems are. The weight of worry I carry matters, though it also doesn’t matter. I can only take my worries so seriously for so long before they start to dictate my day. It helps to cast my eyes on those youngest (and still growing) mountains of the Rocky mountain family. Even the cycle of beauty and destruction can be found in the mountains. Yes, death and resurrection are old golfing buddies whose lives don’t exist without the other. Easy to say, hard to remember.
I am finding the rhythm of my gate. It takes awhile to shift from ‘going’ on a walk to ‘being’ on a walk. The temptation lurks to get it over with so I can get back to that chair and click-clack of the keyboard. But on a day like today, I take a deep breath and slow my roll to a stroll. I am lucky, the path I take is full of wonders for my eyes to behold.
Sandhill Cranes, mares, colts, donkeys, crows, bees, ducks, llamas, peacocks, peahens, chickens, goats, turkeys, and of course dogs. Just last week in the patch of land along my walk, there was what appeared to be a drunk choir of crows circling and each singing their own tune in the loft of the trees. I know just a few things about crows. I know crows are brilliant birds, rivaling the intelligence of a 7-year old, and that a group of crows is a called a ‘murder’. No wonder some folks speculate their appearance is an omen of death. I wonder what omen crows associate with humans?
The immovable cottonwoods line my path and create a canopy of cover from the nosey New Mexican sun. I keep in step. Ever mindful of the used needles that litter my way. A reminder that one is always in relationship to suffering, even if it just bearing witness to its remnants. On these walks I tend to only run into folks looking for refuge of some sort or another; some change or directions usually. A few times I’ve come across a person with a needle. They watch me, and I watch them. If I am too close, their glare intensifies. What does one do in that situation? Hell if I know. I’m still trying to figure that one out. I ask Mystery to touch and comfort them a little as I continue my walk. But I’m left with the same pang as when I hear lawmakers sending their thoughts and prayers to victims of gun violence after a mass shooting?
I turn past the row of cottonwoods down the path next to the acequia. The acequia system in Albuquerque is a marvel, dating back to the late 16th or maybe its the early 17th century, a system of earthen irrigation canals powered by gravity flow. When the acequia is full of water, you see life springing at the banks and small fish making their way. When the acequia is empty, to see plastic bags, beer bottles and the odd shoe. The summer rhythm of water flowing through the city’s acquias, dispersed among neighbors with a lot of compromise and some resentment to those who control the access. I am used to being around water, water feels like home to me. So to see water running alongside and underneath dirty city streets brings me cheer. A friend of mine would always say with the utmost sincereity, ‘water, the elixir of life.’ I think of that often as I take my walk alongside this waterway in the desert.
These daily walks of mine are held with intentions. Be in relationship to the world as it is, not as I wish it to be. To feel insignificant under the mountain walk. To trade the confines of the ergonomically designed office chair for the stride I was born with. To remember that I belong to this world. John of the Cross sings to me on my walks,
Let us rejoice, O my Beloved,
(STANZA XXXVI, The Spiritual Canticle)
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.
I love that last line, ‘Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.’ The praises resound for mountain, hill and pure water as communal reflections of the Beloved’s beauty, then comes the entrance into the heart of the thicket. A lot comes o mind when I think of a thicket? A space of overgrown bushes, a difficult way to make your way through, a passway that leaves it mark on you as you leave your mark on it. The heart of the mystery seems to lie in the thicket, in the brambles, the depth of the path that offers no easy comforts anymore I am in the thicket, I am in this world, in this mystery.
I make my final steps of this walk back into the office. The hum of the overhead lights is soon drowned out by the clickety-clack of keyboards, the echo of one another’s fingers sending off messages into the ether. Matters of consequence appear to be everywhere.
May I always remember to respect and seek out the heart of the thicket.
Photo by Tom Quandt on Unsplash
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