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a walk

I went for a walk, one of my favorite walks, up green mountain. I progressed slowly. Without children or deadlines, I just walked. It has been a difficult week, beleaguered by a body unwilling to comply with the demands I impose on it. A body whose heart beats erratically, thyroid waxes and wanes of its own selection, whose head throbs in response and whose limbs refuse to operate without sustained rest. Weeks like these remind me that I inhabit a body, but am not the body (and certainly not this busy thing we call a mind)...I am reminded that things happen in life. I don't need to resist or personalize them. As I walked I found myself simply placing one foot in front of the other and reveling in the awe of sharing life with so much beauty: a dead bloom against a blue sky, a powdery blossom along a russet hued trail, the gentle flutter of butterflies and the crunching sound of hiking shoes on a trail. After several days gripped by the vice of a migraine, I just didn't have the energy for mind talk and because of that something beautiful happened. I just walked. Without thought of groceries, work, children, time, purpose or even God. I just walked and my heart bloomed in gratitude. It reached out to the beauty all around me and bathed in kinship, reverence and awe. Perhaps that is gratitude. Simply embracing the moment as it comes, without the babbling mental bullshit that we entertain every breathing hour. Perhaps it is enough to simply walk.
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Wind said…
Wow! That really struck a chord in me when you described walking without thought, not even of God. Of course! How clear now that you say it, that even thoughts of God stand between us and the experience of here-now-all-that-is, if only we listen with pure absolute quiet.

My arms are around you.
October 5, 2009 at 11:59 PM
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