Playfully Exploring a Journey

Fridays are my Sabbath day.  It’s the day I have to myself with my husband at work and kiddo at school.  It’s the day I can get a few things done around the house, read a book for pleasure, watch a movie.  Basically, its the one day in the week I have the freedom to wander through the day at my own pace. My day always starts with a walk.  It is this walk that scrubs my soul clean of all the weariness of a week of busy and intense ministry as a chaplain in high acuity areas.  I have a favorite path that I take.  It provides an interesting juxtaposition of suburbia, man made nature space and nature grown forest.  My walks almost always involve stopping at least once or twice for a picture of something that catches my eye and contemplative nature.  It is these walks that feed my creative writing.

Lately though my Fridays have been shared with my daughter as she has had numerous Fridays off from school the last month or so. I love her dearly and love spending time with her, but I have also come to cherish my Sabbath Friday. So I have really had to work to create my Sabbath space and to think outside the box of how that Sabbath time might look.

On our most recent Friday together I decided I was not giving up my morning walk again.  We put on several layers and headed out once it was fully light. I let her choose how many miles she wanted to walk (she choose 4) and we took my usual path.  It was a completely different experience, what is usually a 45 minute walk ended up being a hour and a half explore of nature and play and serenity. 

We marveled at a nest made of leaves and yes, plastic bags (giving a whole new level of meaning to the phrase reduce, reuse, recycle.) I witnessed plain sticks transform into golf clubs, long fingers to tap me with, and more.  A tiny pinecone had to be carried to just the right big pinecone so the “baby” pinecone could have a family.

We laughed at the frog hat that was set so carefully on                                                     a rock and left there for others to find. We stopped                                                          and (safely) broke ice at the edge of a stream. 

I listened to her try to imitate the birdcalls and we watched in silent awe a group of white tailed deer

cross our path. My walk became holy play as I 

watched my daughter connect to God’s creation in 

a completely free and playful way.

In the quieter moments of our walk I found myself turning over in my mind the question of what my Lenten Journey is going to look like.  With Ash Wednesday just days away, I still don’t really know what direction my path is taking. I’ve been living with this question for several days with no good direction.  And as a person who likes to plan ahead this lack of plan or direction is really beginning to bother me.  That was until I watched my daughter take her time playing through our walk spending time with whatever caught her attention.  And realized how what she was engaging in was holy play and with each “Mommy look” she brought me into her holy, contemplative play that had no agenda. And it was in this agenda-less space that I became comfortable continuing to contemplate the question I wrote in my journal a few days ago, “What is the journey I need to be taking this Lent?” So with an open and playful heart I am on the journey ready to see where the question takes me. Because this most recent walk with my daughter taught me that some things, just cannot be rushed and must instead be playfully explored.