Clergy conference can be intense, and this one was no exception. We had been talking all day about how to have hard conversations and we were having them with each other. The topic had been chosen almost a year earlier and planning had been underway for months. The #MeToo Movement was a big part of the impetus for the discussions, especially as more women clergy shared stories of micro and macro aggressions encountered in the life of the Church. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings just a week earlier had left so many of us raw and exhausted, and clergy conference unwittingly drug us more deeply into that fatigue and pain.
We always have free time scheduled for the afternoon, but mine never materialized. As a staff member helping coordinate the conference, I was pulled in numerous directions and by the time I drew a breath to consider embarking the walk I had hoped to take that afternoon, free time was almost gone.
Walking at our conference center is always a joy. It can be windy, piercingly cold, damp and muddy, but it’s still “away” from the routine routes of daily life with vistas uncluttered by suburbia. One trail goes through the woods and descends into a ravine. One goes down toward the river, through fields of corn or soybeans or nothing depending on the time of year. A turn to the right leads to the river bank of the mocha-colored Monocacy. A turn to the left brings one to an old cemetery with the remains of an enslaved person who tilled the soil over 150 years ago.
There are less challenging paths on the paved areas around the property, enough for people to squeeze in their 10,000 steps without wandering too far from shelter. On this particular day, we had been sheltered in a large conference room, 140 of us, for much of the day. Like most of us, I was physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. When we finally broke for the evening at 8:30 PM, I announced that I was taking a walk.
Five others joined me on this spontaneous adventure. We walked a mile loop around the periphery of the retirement community next door. It was dark but the flashlight on my cell phone guided us along our clockwise circumnavigation. We talked, decompressing from the day, grateful for the space, the fresh air, the change in scenery (even if it was dark) and the chance to talk about things mundane that allowed our frontal cortex to coast a bit.
We were about three-quarters of our way around the loop where to our left the view opened up to the river valley. The sky was mostly cloudy, but there was enough twilight remaining to delineate sky from cloud. Crickets chirped in the distance. On a whim, I urged us to stop and stand for a minute or two in silence in this spot, a vista I had spent many mornings at prior gatherings pondering in awestruck wonder during early morning sunrise walks or runs. It was a sacred spot I longed to soak in after a tough day.
As I stood there in the darkness, alone with my thoughts, peering into the darkness of the murky valley and surrounded by a clutch of colleagues, I felt this wave of release. The term that popped into my mind was “cosmic Reiki.” My shoulders relaxed, my lungs sucked in that sweet, crisp October air, and my spirit was cleansed. The fresh air and the community of love that surrounded me was just the tonic I needed.
We moved on and finished our walk. All agreed it was helpful and healing. All were grateful for the moving respite we shared in that 30 minutes.
If I had allowed myself to remain chained to my emotional anchors and not be open to administering some self-compassion by lacing up my hiking boots and heading off into the darkness, I would have missed a valuable encounter of grace. If I had gone alone and not offered to share the walk, I would have lost an opportunity to experience that grace in a community of love whose presence only magnified it seven-fold. Walking provides such a simple and at times profound foundation for divine encounter and divine healing. This 30 minutes of darkness was truly enlightening.
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