Learning To Walk And Seeking To Be Present

Whenever I watch a toddler walking, I marvel that any of us has ever managed to take a step. Somehow, the vast majority of human beings master the act of perambulation, and by the time we’re two, we hardly ever fall! How did we do it?

At this year’s family beach day, Russell started the day in four-wheel drive mode, content to crawl through any terrain from pine needles to pebbles on his hands and knees. He might take a cautious upright step from the picnic table to a nearby lawnchair, but when he fell, he finished the journey on all fours.

However, all this changed as we were loading our cars and saying our goodbyes in the parking lot. Russell started walking around! If he stumbled and fell, he stood back up again. A switch had been flipped in his little brain and body, and suddenly he was a walker!

It was obvious that he realized he had attained celebrity status there in the parking lot at Reid State Park. He hadn’t done anything that would affect the GDP or hasten a cure for cancer, but he was all there in that moment—and so were we!

Seeking to Be Present

I’m taking a page out of Russell’s play book as I learn a new exercise regimen to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Bending and stretching and twisting in ways that require me to look carefully at the instructions and the pictures, I am seeking simply to be present.

My old routine was automatic. I could do all the exercises without even wondering, “What’s next?”

Not now!

Russell and my physical therapist have given me the gift of embracing the natural lull that comes with focused concentration. Like my grandson, I’m experiencing the limitations and the pleasures of embodiment.

When I’m vacuuming the living room or canning tomatoes, I can think about ten thousand other things. I can listen to a podcast or plan my next book review. (I can also worry about things I can’t control and then recycle the worry into prayer.)

I miss the easy flow of my old routine, but I see that this new challenge is creating the conditions for me to practice the skill of presence as I assess the angle of reach in my left arm or remember to follow the movement of my hand with my eyes. G.K. Chesterton wrote with humor and deep wisdom about humanity’s failing capacity to enjoy the present moment—taking special aim at adult humans:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”¹

“So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.”

Genesis 1:27

May we become more like our Father in heaven as we grow into his image by practicing the skill of living in the present moment.

• Do you struggle to value presence over productivity?
• Are there moments in your day when you can be retraining your senses, flirting with “boredom,” or paying attention to your creaturely rhythms in ways that encourage you to live in the present moment?
• What’s your automatic response to a lull in your routine?

May we become more like our Father in heaven as we grow into his image by practicing the skill of living in the present moment.

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“It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them… We have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” #gkchesterton

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Holding You in the Light,

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1. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy ↩︎

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