It is Solved by Walking

A Manner of Listening

February 13, 2025, 6:20 am

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The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

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I went for an early walk before the sun came up last week. Winter had returned to us, and it seemed to blast me open into wakefulness, stinging the nose first, then the soul. I love the way walking forms rhythm for my thoughts. Step, step, step, step. Windblown in the chill, my thoughts began to huddle together again into prayers, shattering the silent world. The neighborhood slept on in quiet, even the dogs typically alert to my presence. The moon was full, a glorious hole in the dark sky, leaking light onto the clouds and the shadows of my steps. I paused at a grassy corner to listen at the miracle. Could I hear the declaration of glory or the proclamation of God’s making? What knowledge would this chilly night reveal?¹ Chimney smoke gently wafted by me, signs of life freshly stirring. A new day was rising behind me, heralding warm splendor upon barren trees and dead grass, restoring the light to my eyes as I turned toward it in the direction of home. Step, step, step. I am listening.

The drama of the resurrection unfolds daily in our lives, yet only sometimes do we have ears or eyes sharp enough to notice. More often we feel stuck or driven by our circumstance, by some disordered matter in our world. We feel the heaviness of discontent by one thing or another and look to change the heart by fixating on the material. I need a different house, a different job, a different curriculum, a different life. We sometimes even think of the people in our life this way, too—wishing our spouse or child or friend or even our own persons were this way or that way. Of course, there is nothing wrong with changing the material of our lives or addressing relational disorder, only that it cannot in itself resurrect a discontent heart.