There’s a lovely old hymn that starts off: “Looking upward every day, sunshine on our faces, pressing onward every day, toward the heavenly places”.
It came to mind this evening, as I walked up the steeply sloping field, with the sunshine gently warming my face. It was a shorter walk than normal – I’m on call for work which means my usual go-to walk and halfway point destination was slightly too far off. It’ll keep for another day.
There’s an old joke about the child who shouts: “Are we nearly there yet?”, when the car has only just got out of the driveway. And sometimes I wonder whether those who I’ve ‘persuaded’ into going walking with me are tempted to shout the same words as we get into the sixth mile.
These walks – for me – are genuinely more about the journey itself than the final destination. I’m fascinated with where the various paths on my map are going to take me and quite often a diversion is based on the simple question: “I wonder where that path goes?”
Each walk I take is an adventure waiting to happen. The animals I see and the bird song which accompanies me along those miles, the discovery of landmarks I didn’t know about and the people I meet – it’s all right up there as a mini adventure.
And each time I go out I walk a little more briskly as my fitness increases and when I come back, I’ve got a new batch of memories to mull over and be thankful for, which exercises my mind and soul.
That old hymn, by the way, continues on. It exhorts us to receive kindness more gratefully each day that passes and be more ready as time passes to forgive those hurts that can cause us such pain. The best verse – and probably the most challenging – is the one that encourages us to take that journey a little more thoughtfully.
Leaving every day behind Something which might hinder; Running swifter every day, Growing purer, kinder…
That’s a real journey to aspire to.
Tractorgirl66 