On holiday last week we walked a lot; sometimes it took a while because I stopped a lot. In his poem happily called "Leisure", the Welsh poet W H Davies asked the question most of us know by heart, but forget to practice: "What is this life if, full of care / we have no time to stand and stare?"
Now there's walking, and then there is walking. Every day I'm trying to stay active and the nagging little phone app tells me how many steps I've taken – and how many still to do to meet the target daily step count. Really? Well, yes, but not to be taken too seriously. Little point in competing with yourself to prove to yourself that you can beat yourself. It's a guide, a help to self-awareness.
But then there's the walk where "we go for a walk". This isn't about the daily constitutional; this is intentional, planned, something I set out to do in a particular place which can be the beach, a wood or a circular from our door. Back to last week. We were on holiday in Findochty; for those who don't know, a small fishing village on the Moray Coast, which is a great place to walk. Any amount of walking. Also a good place for stopping "to stand and stare."
When I 'go for a walk', I take my camera. I know that as well as walking I'll be looking, and seeing, and stopping. Last week I took a lot of pictures, many and maybe most of them discarded. But several of them record important moments of encounter and of falling in love again with a world far too easily taken for granted. I love the natural world of land and sea, birds and flowers, moss and trees, rocks and lichen, the close-up and the far away, the sunlit and the clouded grey. A camera can be a prayer book with the added feature of a shutter click.
Prayer can be an exercise in patient waiting, and no guarantee that what you wait for will happen; at least, not the way you want or expect it to. Last week I watched rock pipits. They're quite shy, and reluctant to pose conveniently for that guy over there who stops and stares. Those minutes standing still, watching and waiting, hopeful but not certain, alert for the right moment when my intrusion is forgiven and the bird comes into focus – sometimes prayer is just as frustrating, and rewarding.
When the Psalmist writes "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me" he is saying exactly what I felt at the moment this rock pipit hopped on to this rock and winked at me! I suppose what I'm saying is that prayer isn't always rewarding or satisfying; nor is it meant to be. It is an encounter, a seeking for the other, a longing to see and wonder at the beauty and reality of One who may be elusive, on the move, just beyond the moment of capture, and inviting us to keep looking and hoping and longing. And now and then, we are forgiven the intrusion and we sense "He inclined unto me." (Psalm 40.1)
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