Alan Jacobs


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Walking is a way of connecting, of feeling our feet on the ground, a very ordinary and surprisingly spiritual thing. Author Kathleen Norris writes of its power in her small book The Quotidian Mysteries. Making the case that God is best known to us in simple, daily activities, she shares that walking is a kind of ‘poetic meter’ that 'originates in the bodily rhythm of arms and legs in motion’ and 'reflects the basic rhythms of creation.’ Another word for that rhythm, the rhythm of body, poetry, and creation, is prayer.
Diana Butler Bass. No, it really, really isn’t. I walk miles and miles in my neighborhood every single day, and it is a great blessing to me, and the recent restoration of walking to a nameable place in our culture is a wonderful thing, but it’s not praying unless I, you know, pray. To say that the rhythm of walking is prayer is just wooly-minded BS.