Reflection

Last Friday, I was asked a difficult question regarding this adventure: "What has stood out the most?"  I honestly could not answer.  I thought back over 37 miles of prayer-walking, and the only responses I could come up with were places: the German-style architecture of the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital; Lime Creek; the underside of Pennsylvania Street Bridge; the skate park. It seemed to me I should have had more to say.

People regularly ask me, "When do you walk?"  I never really know how to respond.  You see, this isn't a planned 35 minutes of daily exercise I have allotted for myself.  It isn't the search for a scenic pathway.  This isn't even a pet-owner's duty I am pursuing.  Those are benefits of the practice, but not really the purpose.

I am walking because pilgrims walked; because Jesus walked.  I am praying because followers of the Way pray; because Jesus prayed.  I am trying to see this new community from the ground-it's unique sidewalks, crosswalks, and conglomerations of people.  I am trying to experience the Mason City its children know.

In walking, I have made new friends.  One of them joins me regularly, and our walking has become a place to share and a time to work together toward physical health.  In walking, I have learned enough of the layout of Mason City that when church members tell me where they live, I can usually "locate" their neighborhood in my mind, and even occasionally their particular house.  I have also gathered a small following of readers who keep me accountable.  They want to know where I've been and what I've seen.

The first day I spent in Mason City, I was taken to a church member's home.  Recently, I was invited back, and as we parked in front of her house, I told my husband, with a lightness of spirit, "Oh, I have prayed over this house!"  I don't know what that lightness of spirit really meant, except that in praying while walking and seeing, I am somehow connecting to the places, and that when I meet a person whose home, yard and neighborhood I have prayer-walked, I feel as though I am more connected to him or her.  It is oddly fulfilling to know that I prayed Christ's Peace for them before I even knew them.

So, maybe that is what is really standing out the most.  Instead of learning the "good" spots and the "bad spots," the "nightspots," and and the "historic" spots, the "scenic" spots and the "scary" spots,  I am simply becoming connected here.  Walking, for me, creates a kind of possession of space, and the 37 miles of Mason City my legs have traversed are a few short miles towards really feeling that this place is my home.


I do know this as well:  when I was a kid, there was no place I was too afraid to go; no people too dangerous for me to meet.  As I have gotten older, fear has crept into my experience, and it is often easier to let the world around me stay a stranger.  Walking River City is helping me to confront myself in this, because I cannot truly reflect Christ's light unless I can love the people and places God sends me to, and I cannot love those people and places until I can meet them without fear.



View Prayer Walks 1-18 in a larger map