A walk

A walk in nature, they say, will lower your anxiety and reset your ability to pay attention. Also, it's exercise. Two days into a five-day stay on Washington Island, after rather a lot of eating and drinking yesterday, I needed to get off my butt. 

One problem I have with going for a walk is listening to what plays in my head. A song, an ear worm, a story I tell myself or pretend I'm telling someone else. The stories are, perhaps, helpful, processing and reprocessing the past, repackaging what happened and why, rehearsing, revisiting the details in the storage lockers of the brain. Those well-worn tales are farther and farther in the past. And on a beautiful morning like today, it's best to let them go. All those details, all those explanations can summon emotions, a dark mood that could be hard to shake. And today is a day that inspires -- literally, with breath and breeze -- the sense of the world creating itself anew.

The ear worm that it stuck in my head lately is a little syncopated Carl Schalk melody for the scripture verse "The Lord is my light and my salvation," something published long ago in a collection of brief settings of offertories, or something. It's may be the stickiest tune I know (darn it, Carl), and when it's on repeat in my head to the rhythm of my walking feet, the text loses all meaning. 

The  Lord is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Psalm 27:1

I thought about this as I walked this morning. Does this image work for me? Does it point to God at work in my life? Defending me, pulling me out of trouble, setting me on a high rock, a place where you'd build a castle or a fortress?

No, not really. 

But the ever-moving breath of God, creating and recreating and redeeming the earth and its people from day to day, year to year, era to era? Refreshing my spirit with a forty-minute walk in nature. That works. 

I'm listening to the wind and banishing the ear worm. Works for me.