Walking is the fastest pace for noticing – go out and have a good walk today, notice your neighbourhood, enjoy its sounds and smells and sights. Anchor yourself and find where you belong. Refresh your spirit and your soul.
I posted this suggestion on Facebook and twitter yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since.
All of us know that walking has benefits for our physical health. Just 30 minutes, 5 times a week reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, reduces the risk of colon cancer, helps control body weight, increases bone density and helps prevent osteoporosis. And thats only part of the list.
Walking is one of the best things we can do for our spiritual well being too. Not walking as in stair climber or gym, not running either, though they can have benefits, but walking as in getting out to explore our neighbourhoods.
Walking is fun, relaxing and for most of us, easy to do. It also the best way to notice what goes on in us and around us. It is the only pace at which we really do see and hear and smell all that is happening around us.
I love to walk around the garden each morning to see how much my vegetable plants have grown overnight. It is also a great time to commune with God and draw closer to the One who has created all that I see around me. Each moment and thing has the potential to become a vehicle for revelation. Walking can open us up to new ways to experience God and the world around us. Each step contributes to the rhythm of our life and its revelation can overflow into the whole of our life. It is a gift that draws us towards God and towards others.
Walking is also one of the best way to get to know our neighbourhoods, our neighbours and our friends. I love to walk the dog around the neighbourhood, noticing who is working on their garden, which yards look neglected and who else is out there enjoying the local park. People often stop to say hello. They share stories about themselves, their gardens and their pets. And I love to walk around the city noticing the urban lots transformed into p-patches, the new skyscrapers rising into the sky, and the homeless people asleep in the doorways.
Interestingly, the best speed for walking according to coolwalking is “as fast as you can without losing the ability to hold a conversation.” Walking is not meant to be done alone, it is meant to be done in company with others. As I think of that I am reminded of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. (Luke 24:14,15). So often when we walk and talk with others it is as though Jesus walks with us, explaining the scriptures and the ways in which they reveal who he is.
Walking is for noticing not just sights sounds and smells but God and neighbours and friends.
What will you notice today?
Here is another very popular prayer from the Light for the Journey Facebook page
I posted this prayer on the Light for the Journey Facebook page this week. It has gained a lot of attention and so thought I should share it here too. Enjoy!
We are moving forward with the pole barn at the Mustard Seed Village and are looking for barn wood that we can upcycle to use as the finishing layer on the walls. Any leads or offers of wood are welcome – especially if you live in the Camano/Stanwood area.
Check out the village slide show of this first building going up… and become part of the show – we’ll feature your old barn resurrected for new purposes!
Today’s post is written by Chris Holcomb, a former MSA intern currently living in Boone, NC, where he works as an insurance agent for Bankers Life, volunteers as a community metrics intern for BALLE, and occasionally blogs at thellamaandthecow.wordpress.com. He and his wife are enjoying learning what it means to slow down and appreciate life in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains.
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As I referenced in my Back to the Basics post exploring poverty, one of the formative experiences in my life was a mission trip to Costa Rica where I did very little to aid the people of Costa Rica, but they did much to help me. It was there that I first witnessed in a radical way the potential for disconnect between income and happiness or gratitude. Some of the happiest and most gracious people I have ever met have lived in trailers, dirt-floor homes, and homeless shelters.
Because of this, it has always been slightly disconcerting to me as an economics student that my academic discipline is based partially on the relationship between money and utility (a measure of happiness or satisfaction) and the principle that “more is always better.” While I have never purported that there is no relationship between money and happiness or that “less is always better,” my life experiences have taught me that there are often much more important things for my own personal satisfaction in life than just my wealth or possessions. I believe that most economists, if you asked them about their personal experiences, would say the exact same thing as me, and yet we continue to religiously watch the daily rise and fall of the stock market, hold up per capita GDP as the primary barometer for our country’s health, and read sensationalist articles telling us that “Money Can Buy Happiness.”
Thankfully, there is a growing movement to promote alternatives to GDP (Such as: the Genuine Progress Indicator, the Human Development Index, the Ecological Footprint, The Happy Planet Index, and Gross National Happiness), and many before me have given this movement ammunition by studying well-being at both personal and national levels. A good synopsis of the breadth of research on this topic can be found in Alois Stutzer and Bruno S. Frey’s report here. It has been pretty widely established by now that the relationship between per capita GDP and a country’s well-being (as measured by subjective surveys) is logarithmic, that is, countries see dramatic increases in well-being as GDP initially rises, but each further increase in GDP brings about progressively smaller increases in well-being. This makes sense; a five dollar bill is worth less to a millionaire than a beggar. The following chart from Ronald Inglehart (simplistically) further illustrates this transition: that after basic needs are met through economic growth, individuals do not see as much gain in well-being from improvements in income and “Non-economic aspects of life become increasingly important influences on how long, and how well, people live.”
Those of us Westerners who don’t have to worry about where our next meal is going to come from are living in this lifestyle sphere, and it is this society that Christine writes for in her post, “What Happiness Habits Should We Develop?” When considering topics for my senior economics thesis, I decided to build upon all of this prior research and put Inglehart’s hypothesis under a microscope. I knew that the things Christine’s post mentions had been more important than money for my own personal happiness, but I wanted to see what the data had to say to either confirm or deny my instincts about their application at a national level.
While I was slightly limited by my lack of a PhD and access to any data that wasn’t free, my research was subject to critique by both my peers and superiors and, I believe, representative of the highest achievable academic quality at the undergraduate level. I began by analyzing whether there really was a difference between high and low-income countries in terms of what makes them happiest. Setting $8,500 in per capita GDP as the cutoff point between low and high-income, I found that there were indeed massive differences between the two groups. The 5 most important variables for the collective well-being of a low-income country were:
1. Subjective Opinion of Health
2. Level of Freedom of Choice and Control
3. Lack of Materialistic Priorities
4. Per Capita GDP
5. A Low Unemployment Rate.
For High-Income Countries, the top 5 were:
1. Subjective Opinion of Health
2. Lack of Materialistic Priorities
3. Importance Given to Leisure Time
4. Level of Confidence in “the churches”
5. Having Fewer Working Hours
While subjective assessments of health and levels of materialism remained important in all countries, the other 3 variables for each group were markedly distinct from each other. This result seemed to justify my decision to look more selectively at just high-income countries for analyzing national well-being, as most previous analyses had lumped all countries together for their tests.
As I analyzed this subset of countries further, I explored many different questions and came away with two more observations that are worthy of sharing here. The first was that while increases in GDP do still result in increased well-being among high income countries, this effect almost entirely disappears when the decreases in unemployment and annual working hours that typically accompany GDP are taken into account. This suggests that if we really want to increase our well-being as a country, we ought to decrease our average working hours per person, allowing for more leisure time and more employment.
The second observation had to do with our views on the government’s role in environmental protection. It seems that there is a stark contrast between those who are willing to spend personal income for environmental protection and those who would like the government to do so. Citizens willing to spend their personal incomes typically reside in less wealthy countries that place more emphasis on leisure time, while citizens encouraging their government to stop pollution typically reside in higher income countries with lower ecological footprints and less trust among the population.
Overall, I must say that while not everything was exactly as I expected, my research did little to sway the priorities that I had learned from life prior to my semester of statistical analysis. Whether we look at psychological studies, econometric analysis, or personal experience, it seems that if we really want to be happier both individually and collectively, we must follow Christ’s example: ensure that the poor, widowed, and orphaned have the basics they need for survival; realize that slavery to a job, chasing after increased incomes, and the accumulation of material possessions is an ultimately hollow pursuit; and cultivate strong relationships that engender trust with those around us as a Church body united in Christ.
My full paper is available for free download here.
On retreat with Tom and Bonnie
A couple of days ago I asked the question How Do We Know When Its Time to Slow Down? That was the focus of my reflections during the retreat that Tom and I have just returned from. Doing the balancing act of work, hospitality and rest has been challenging over the last couple of months and I know that I need to slow down.
What I realized on the retreat however is that slowing down is not really about cutting back on my schedule. Slowing down is really about reaffirming my sense of purpose and regaining my perspective on what really matters. It is about giving time to the things that renew my soul and rebuild my body and my spirit.
Above all I have realized that slowing down, for me, is about regaining my Sabbath days. At one point I resolved to set aside Sunday as a day of reflection, refocusing and enjoyment. It seems however that I have forgotten that. This week I was reminded however that Sabbath is not meant to be a day of recovery from exhaustion. The rest of Sabbath is meant to be the rest of contentment and enjoyment, when we like God, sit and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. It is meant to be a time to enjoy our relationship to God, to each other and to God’s good creation. As Norman Wirzba says in Food and Faith, Sabbath: has to do with the intense joy and peace, the supreme delight and the contentment that followed from God’s life-giving work. (45)
Sabbath is not just for one day of the week however. It is for every day. I know that savouring the beauty, the joy, the contentment of God’s life-giving work within me, within those around me and within God’s good creation is a lot of what disappears when I am too busy. Regaining those holy sabbath pauses that come not just on Sundays but every day when we take time to pause and sit in the joy and contentment of what we have done that is life giving and God affirming is so important. for me and I think for all of us.
So my question for myself and for all of us today is: How do you live out the Sabbath every day of the week?
Tom and I are back from our retreat time. My reading for our days away included part of Norman Wirzba’s wonderful book Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating. I have been reflecting on the meaning of communion and thought and his comment:
Eating is about extending hospitality and making room for others to find life by sharing in our own…. Eating is an invitation to enter into communion and be reconciled with each other. To eat with God at the table is to eat with the aim of healing and celebrating the memberships of creation…. Food is a gift to be gratefully received and generously shared. (11)
Reflecting on this statement has brought back many memories for me of meals shared and friendships forged. Hospitality has become one of the most important aspects of my life and will as many of you know be the central theme for sharing on this blog over the next few months.
Enjoying Ethiopian meal at the Mustard Seed House
I still remember vividly when, several years ago, our good friends Melody and Gil George cooked a wonderful Ethiopian meal for us. The delicious hot and spicy sauces were spooned onto platters spread with layers of the Ethiopian flatbread injera. More mounds of injera dotted the table waiting for us to tear off pieces with our fingers so that we could scoop up the wonderful berbere flavoured wots. By the end of the meal all that remained on the platter were broken pieces of injera soaked with the remains of the sauces.
As we gathered the empty platters I was struck by how much this meal must have resembled meals Jesus ate with his disciples and those other friends of his – the tax collectors and prostitutes. Bread was far more than an adjunct to their meals, it was the very heart of their shared life together. The bread was broken so that people could share together the nourishment they needed to sustain life. And as the bread was broken there was implicit in the act, a sharing of hospitality, of togetherness and of community. Anybody who ate from their table, friend or stranger, rich or poor, young or old would enter into this shared community.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that in eating together in this way we had shared in the communion of Christ’s body.
Contrast this to a church I was in recently in which the elements of the Eucharist were passed around in prepackaged sterile containers filled with a wafer of bread and a sip of grape juice. The only experience we shared together were those sounds we made as we ripped the covers off the communion elements. And even those were muted by our embarrassment at disturbing the quiet atmosphere of the moment. No wonder the congregation hurried away afterward with barely a thought for those with whom they had shared the pews.
I wonder how much we limit the celebration of our faith by partaking of the bread and the wine of communion in a sterile environment that disconnects us from the enjoyment of God in the midst of everyday life? For most of us, the celebration of the bread and the wine of the Eucharist no longer draws us into the wonder of communion with Christ and the intimacy of enjoying his presence in all of life’s celebrations and struggles. In fact, often it disconnects us.
I love Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread, in which she too grapples with the meaning of communion in the midst of everyday life. “It wasn’t a private meal,” she reflects.
“The bread on that Table had to be shared with everyone in order for me to really taste it. And sharing it meant I was going to be touching Christ’s body at St Gregory’s… Looking into Christ’s eyes outside the church through the cheery yuppie with the sports car and the veiled Muslim clerk at Walgreens. Listening to Christ’s voice in other churches… I was going to get communion, whether I wanted it or not, with people I didn’t necessarily like.” (97)
For the early church, communion was about celebrating the great feast of life together, not just with each other but also with God who gave this gift of life to all who shared in the meal. Hospitality was central to faith because was a reminder of the fact that in the sharing of food Christ was present in our midst. More than that, as all sat down together the barriers between rich and poor, slave and free, male and female were dissolved. The sharing of meal opened a doorway to the wonders of God’s eternal world in which we will one day all feast together at the great banquet celebration of God.
I think it is time we rediscovered the true hope and celebration of communion as it was understood by early followers of Christ. What a wonderful hope we look forward to every time we share a meal and take time to recognize that Christ sits down at the table with us. As we pass round the food it is his life that we are sharing. It is his life that nourishes our bodies and our spirits, drawing us together into a community of love and mutual care in which once more all barriers are broken down and we share together of the abundance and shalom of God’s kingdom.
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