Walks with Barry - Profoundly Simple: A Walk Reframed

Since the pandemic began, I have been walking. I am now walking through my third season of 2020. First Spring, then Summer and now Fall. I have watched the plants change. I have watched the activities of families and children change. I have felt the temperatures rise and fall. One of the most fascinating changes is the change in the light. The sun rises much later and it’s angles are striking. This morning, after almost an hour of walking in the dark, I turn the corner and felt a bit like Moses. I saw a blaze that stopped me in my tracks. It took me a moment to realize I had not walked upon a wild fire. This was the sun bursting into the day. It was a truly astounding sight. I felt the need to pause and be still in the presence of such a overwhelming moment. It was most impressive. I’m always amazed when I ponder the concept of space, with the rotating earth revolving around the sun so far, far away. What a wonder. What a miracle. Yet all is tied to this one phenomenon. Each day of our...

Unfortunately, for various reasons, I missed my routine walk this morning. But then this moon greeted me tonight, and all was right with the world. A haze made the moon appear a lamplight far on the horizon, floating free in the darkness of the wide sky. It seemed to me a beacon, a guide in the night. For a person who grew up outdoors and often in the woods, I am famous for my terrible sense of direction. As a boy, I knew the anxiety that came with realizing I was turned and all alone a long way from home. As a teenager I knew the embarrassment of going into the woods with friends in the darkness of a cold winter morning, only to find with the rising sun that I had not ended up in my spot. I then spent all the time my friends were hunting trying to find my way back to something familiar. As a city-dwelling adult, I am frequently driving the wrong direction or failing to take the correct exit or at a loss to find my truck. At work these days, when asked to park in a place other than my ...

As I looked across the little park in my neighborhood this morning, the fog hung low on the horizon. As I paused to survey the scene, I was aware that a sense of peace and calm was invoked by the mysterious landscape. All seemed quiet. All seemed to take a pause to breathe deeply at the beginning of the new day. Then, out of the fog, there appeared a person walking their faithful companions. It was if they materialized, arriving mysteriously, from another place or time. It was if they were just briefly passing through my world. Sometimes, this is how my memories or bits and pieces of my dreams come to me. Unbidden and unplanned, they, too, seem to materialize from other places and other times to briefly pass through my world. Faces of those loved and lost and deeply missed sometimes rise out of the fog of my busyness. From time to time a vivid scene from childhood becomes so real that I could swear I hear familiar voices and smell the unique aroma of home long ago lost. There have been...

On these drizzly, overcast mornings that carry a touch of cool Fall air with the sunrise, I walk for a long while in the dark. I miss opportunities for pictures during the first couple of miles of my journey, and I worry that the remaining miles might hold nothing that catches my eye or my imagination. So far, so good. It seems that somehow, someway, something pops up every day. This morning, as it slowly grew light, I saw these mushroom/fungi/ whatever it is that grows after it rains type of thing. They are on the ground. Their color is muted and bland. Unless one is looking at their feet, I imagine they would go unnoticed for their entire life span. I doubt anyone would plant them or build a garden around them. Yet, in their own way, they are interesting. And I imagine I will now look for them each morning going forward. It is easy to fall into the shortsighted habit of only seeing the bright and flashy as we walk through our life and the diversity of creation. The brilliantly colore...

Everyday I pass this little electric car, safe and snug in its driveway. It is always plugged in, getting recharged so it is ready to go wherever life calls. I wonder if it starts the day by taking little ones to school. Or maybe it is making a commute to Dallas each morning. This little car could spend its miles delivering meals or giving rides to the doctor. The sky is the limit when you are recharged and ready to go. I think, on every walk, how I wish I could just plug in overnight and be fully charged and ready to go upon awakening, starting full speed ahead every morning. Life would be so much easier. No concern over being able to fall asleep quickly. No worries about being able to find restful, restorative sleep. No more anxiety from tossing and turning over the burdens of the day. It seems to me that one of the important things in life is to discover what recharges our mind and soul. We need to know what it is that feeds us. Time alone? Time with those we love and who love us? A...

Nothing like walking on a dreary, overcast morning and finding an explosion of purple. This flowering bush was green the last time I passed. Today, it is crazy loud and beautiful. What an unexpected explosion of color! I like color. The people in my life give me a lot of grief over my love of color. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I wear seersucker suits. I have a number of colors: red, blue, grey, tan, green and purple. As a large person, I am reminded from time to time when I wear color, “that is a lot of red” or “that is a lot of purple”. But, seriously, can you have too much color? Creation is alive with infinite shades of color. The sky. The sunrise and sunset. The rainbow. The human race. The countless colors of flowers and ever-changing greens of the leaves. In that strange book of the Bible called The Revelation, the description of the beauty of the heavenly city is a portrait done in blazing color. There are rainbows and sapphires and emeralds. There is gold and pearl and ...

Ever since the homeowners hung this swing in their majestic oak, I have had a small degree of regret that my walks are always much too early to allow me to catch the parents playing with the little one who inspired the swing. I imagine the loving smiles of mom or dad. I can almost hear the innocent giggles of the little one as they feel both the freedom of flying and the total adoration of their parents. I can’t imagine anything but happiness at this spot as I pass every day. It makes me smile. If only life could remain so basic and simple. If only we could imagine life to be so kind and safe. If only everyone grew up surrounded by such love as I imagine to live in that little house and between that little family. If only. If only. But I think that sometimes we fail to appreciate the power of our imagining. We can’t keep life simple and basic in a complex, changing world by imagining, but we can imagine how we might live simply and remain free from the materialism that seeks to own us....