I rode my bike this morning. I try to do this most mornings, because I find that no matter where I am in my head by the time I get home something in me is quiet and centered. It doesn't start out that way. Today there was more than the usual cacophony. Just when I started to feel guilty for not being able to control my mind better, four yellow birds flew in my path. They were tiny and inconsequential in the grand scheme of my own importance, but they caught my eye because of their eye-popping color against a grey sky. Then I slowed my bike down to figure out where that background roar was coming from. To my left, I saw that Wolf Creek had been transformed by recent thunderstorms from a slow flow to a rushing wild thing that threatened to overflow it's banks. The verdant new little leaves glowed. I came home and read,
"The body is a great focuser, whether the means is pain or pleasure. The body is a great reminder of where we came from and where we are going, on the one sacred journey that we all make whether we mean to or not.
Jesus walked a lot, and not only during the last week of his life. The four gospels are peppered with accounts of him walking into the countryside, walking by the Sea of Galilee, walking in the Temple, and even walking on water. If Jesus had driven a car instead, it is difficult to imagine how that might have changed his impact. Surely someone could have loaned him a fast horse. Instead, he walked everywhere he went, except for a short stint on a donkey at the end. This gave hime time to see things, like the milky eyes of the beggar sitting by the side of the road, or the round black eyes of sparrows sitting in their cages at the market.
If he had been moving more quickly- even to to reach more people- these things might have become a blur to him. Because he was moving slowly, they came into focus for him, just as he came into focus for them. Sometimes he had a destination and sometimes he did not. For many who followed him around, he was the destination. Where he was going somewhere or nowhere at all, going with him was the point. Food tasted better at the pace he set. Stories lasted longer. Talk went deeper. While many of his present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it. Jesus was a walker, not a rider. He took his sweet time."
(from An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. One of my all-time favorite books.)
In a time of my life characterized by yearning and hoping, this was what I needed today. Now I can go down to my studio and be in His presence. My time feels consecrated instead of frustrated. His peace goes with me as I pay attention to the feel of paper under my hands and paint on the canvas. I am aware of even the rough wood under my bare feet as I descend the stairs. The peacebird lands, and it is yellow against a grey sky.
