Out Wandering

Everything was created through him; nothing—not one thing!—came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.
(John 1:3-5, MSG)

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk to get my body moving and clear my head. I’d spent five or six hours writing and needed to be outside in the air. I would never want to waste a moment, though, and so I scrolled through available podcasts to find a 30-minute talk. This way I could learn something along the way. Thirty minutes would amount to four laps around the neighborhood pond at a good pace.

About three minutes into my walk I did something I’d never done. I veered off the paved path into the damp grace and down to the reeds lining the water. From a distance, the pond seemed choked by dull browns and harbingers of winter—my least favorite season. But as I got closer, I discovered movement and breath and life. My eyes could not hold it all in a single glance. Every little detail demanded my attention—cottony puffs sprouted out of large seed pockets, tiny flowers peaked from seemingly dead stalks, golden grasses bent in the wind, a pocked beetle tiptoed across a tree stump, and wispy snowflake blossoms bathed in sunlight.

I couldn’t help but touch these fall textures and as I kneeled to run my fingers along a prickly shoot, a grasshopper leaped across my hand, startling me to laughter. In that moment I realized how long it had been since I’d been out wandering, without a plan or stopwatch. I’d forgotten to be a stroller, or as the French would say, a flâneur—someone who wanders to notice the small and hidden wonders. Instead, I’d been walking on the path, trying not to get my shoes muddy. I’d been on a schedule, accomplishing things. I started to consider what else I might have missed, in my daughter’s eyes, a friend’s voice, or within my soul.

Oh, may we not forget to go out wandering to delight in the small and hidden wonders. Not one of them came into being apart from the divine hand. And may we not fail to notice His whispers within and between us for all the big things we are accomplishing.