A Pathway: My Next Painting

After a three-month break, I took up painting again today.  My next painting's going to be of a pathway in the woods.

Ever since I got into hiking and walked the Camino in Spain, I've become enamoured with pathways.  Reading Arthur Boers' book The Way is made by Walking last year augmented this appreciation by exploring the theme of walking and pilgrimage from biblical, historical, spiritual, and theological perspectives.  It's almost as though Boers elaborated in words on a theme that I'd grown to appreciate experientially - by walking! - over the past 10 years.  Not only that, Boers' exploration of the theme confirmed something that I'd known intuitively for years: something happens to us when we walk.  Something spiritual.  God speaks to us. 

I've experienced this Voice over and over again, first when I started living car-less in Vancouver, going to many places on foot, but more particularly this past year after moving to the prairies, walking to/from work almost everyday.  In the morning, I pray while walking through Crescent Park.  In admiring the beauty around me, my spirit is taken up as it were, to contemplate God's own beauty.  The colours.  The smells.  The sounds.

But walking is conducive not just to praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, but also to repentance, lamentation, and supplication.  The most common words coming out of my mouth while in the park are Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!  I tell God all my troubles.  I repent of my sins.  I ask for mercy.

It makes perfect sense to me that Boers considers regular walks a spiritual discipline, along the same lines as fasting or prayer.  When we walk, as when we pray or fast, things important for our spiritual well-being mysteriously come to the fore.  And mysteriously, God meets us there, on the way.