Editor’s Note: Our guest writer this week Tim Leadem is a practitioner and student of walking and pilgrimages. His reminder of how walkers encourage each other to push on “further” is a powerful reminder of our choices in the November elections. Will we choose leaders committed to continuing to move forward for liberty and justice for all or those who sell fear and backward movement to a white, straight, male-dominated world? Enjoy this poetic reminder of the power of “walking” and the need to cheer each other in a positive direction. 

We are all walkers.  Sometime during our first year on this earth, we took our first steps.  Now I doubt that anyone of us remembers those first tentative steps on our own two feet.  But I bet our parents remembered them and took pride in watching us teeter along.  It’s what we did when we witnessed our children’s first steps.  Walking defines us as a species.  We are the species that stands up and walks.

 Perhaps we were of an age and a generation that saw us walking everywhere- to school, to Church, to the corner store, to the arena where we put on our skates to dance across the ice.

We walked and we continue to walk.

When we walk, we take the time to notice things,  to observe the world in a slow motion cascade of images rather than just speeding by in a car or some motorized vehicle.  When we walk, all of our senses become engaged.  

And we walk in all seasons.  In the spring we step outdoors and feel the return of the warm sun on our faces.  The smell of new growth is fresh on the breezes.  We bear witness as each leaf is pulled out from the earth and takes shape.

We saunter along in summer as we walk barefoot through the grass allowing the fullness of the earth to squish between our toes. We become grounded to the Earth, and allow the healing of the earth to work within us.

As we step along, we see how the countryside has erupted into green and smell the foliage in our evening strolls-the aromatic cedars or the sweetness of wisteria.  

 Autumn is a favourite time to walk; we hear the rustling of the fallen leaves shuffling around our feet as we sense how the leaf is returning to the earth from which it sprang.

Perhaps we grew up in a land where we walked in winter, and heard how the snow crunched and emitted those curious squealing sounds made by our heavy boots. We noticed how the wintry sun’s rays are refracted off of a thousand myriad crystals.

We walk to fulfill a deep need.  We all have this incredible holy longing. We long for love and that feeling of completeness in our lives.   That longing is what brings us to seek out comfort or union with God, no matter what shape the deity may take. There is such mystery in the world that we can never comprehend, but we are drawn to hear about such mysteries, and perhaps to pray and sing together echoing our soul’s deep need for the love of God.

 Sometimes we decide to walk with spiritual intent.  We walk on a journey where we not only engage our 5 senses but we also involve our souls. Pilgrimages are not mere walks, but also present an opportunity to heal ourselves from the inside out.

When we walk with spiritual intent, we unite our souls with the thousands of souls that have walked the same paths before us.  The great pilgrimages of the world have existed for centuries and in some places their steps have left visible imprints in the stone in churches or temples along the way.

And we may walk alone, but more often than not we walk with others.  We share the journey.   There is such comfort in timing our steps to walk with a friend, a partner, a confidante.  When we walk thus it is a time for sharing of secrets, and to open our hearts to one another and to everything really.  

On Camino, many walkers are encountered as they make their way to Santiago de Compostela.  And pilgrims greet one another.  We call out to one another “Buen Camino”.  “Have a good pilgrimage!” Or sometimes we are greeted by the words “Ultreia”, a medieval Latin word that means “Further.”

When we are tired and the way is steep -“Ultreia!-“walk on.”  When we are lost and made a wrong turn and need to find our way back -“Ultriea.!”  Guide our steps to find the path again.  When we stand on a hill and can see in the distance the end of our life’s journey – “Ultriea.”  Push on toward the end.  When we walk there is always the opportunity to walk with an open heart -open to love and to God.  Ultreia!  Further! Just a few more steps.