Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., once observed that “the quest for justice demands that I walk in ways that I never walked before, that I talk and think and pray and learn and grow in ways that are new to me.”(Quoted from Who Shall be Welcome in God’s Tent, by Andrew Remick, 2019)
When I walk, I walk in Beauty,
Beauty, beauty everywhere.
When I walk I walk in Beauty,
Beauty, beauty like a prayer.
This verse, that I sometimes sing when walking, is based on a Native American saying.
This week in Canada, more mass graves were found of First Nations People, buried anonymously in land formerly occupied by a Christian school.
This week I visited a Parish church in Derbyshire where a 15th century tomb displays effigies of two people who may or may not be those for whom the tomb is named.
That church itself is dedicated to John the Baptist, memorable for loosing his head for confronting an abuse of power.
Most of the time I walk in a green valley where the only memorials are in a small deserted graveyard where a few headstones remember those who laboured to build the system of reservoirs that were constructed in the 19th century to bring a cleaner water supply to the city of Manchester.
In this small valley it is is usually easy to see beauty: it’s all around me.
But what is beauty and who says?
Is beauty more easily found in over grazed pastures and moorland managed for shooting imported game birds or in the withering branches of a tree dying slowly from an imported disease?
Since walking the End to End in 2019, a feat that is to me both incredible and credible, I’ve had a lot of questions about walking through the world around me, much of which has happened during a lockdown due to a global pandemic. Walking is also the basis of my daily worship, the rhythm of my prayer and the means of processing my thoughts.
I was glad to find the words of Sister Bowman. I am committed to walking in ways that are new to me, in ways I’ve never walked before as I learn, think and pray in these new ways.
From my remembered bible: It is the narrow way that leads to life.
Walk with me.
Janet Lees 25.06.2021, in Longdendale, Derbyshire.