Tag: Mindful sauntering

Mindful Sauntering: Embracing the moment

There is a suggestion that a saunterer is a person walking to the Holy Land, coming from the French ‘à la sainte-terre’. So let’s consider sauntering to be a form of holy or blessed walking.

The scriptures give God many names as people try to describe their encounter with the presence of holiness. Such names – or descriptions – include beloved, father, mother, midwife and shepherd; or  rock, tower, shield, light and sun of righteousness. In our prayers we may talk of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit or alternatively as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

I wonder if we have our own particular name that describes our experience of the presence of holiness.

i thank You God by e e cummings 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The heavens are telling the glory of God; they are a marvellous display of his craftsmanship. Day and night they keep on telling about God.  Without a sound or word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. Psalm 19:1-4a (Living Bible)

‘To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, ‘I am human and you are God’. Henri Nouwen

Mindful Sauntering: Pentecost 

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”  Cynthia Occelli

Pentecost was in origin an agricultural festival celebrating the harvest of the abundance that each grain, sown in the spring, had produced. Today, at Pentecost, we celebrate the abundant riches of the Holy Spirit.

God’s Grandeur by Gerald Manley Hopkins 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Reaper with wheat field and sun (part thereof) by Vincent Van Gogh

As we walk under the sky and on the earth, may God the Holy Spirit enfold us. Amen.

Green Tau

Mindful Sauntering

It is widely accepted that walking – especially in green or blue spaces – is good for our mental and physical wellbeing. It is also widely accepted that mindful activities where we slow down and allow ourselves to be more focused on the present moment are also good for our wellbeing.

And yet, we can still need a purpose or a stimulus to get us into such activities.

A few years ago I organised a series of what I called ‘mindful sauntering’. In essence this was a gentle walk early in the morning out in the beauty of Richmond Park. The walk began with the reading of a poem or a prayer to provide food for thought, after which we walked in silence. Returning, we then shared thoughts that had come to us we had walked. The whole finished with coffee and pastries in a local cafe. 

I used the word ‘sauntering’ because there is the suggestion* that a saunterer was a person walking to the Holy Land – sainte terre in French. From this it seems a small step to view sauntering as a form of holy or blessed walking. 

These mindful saunters were not much more than an hour in length and usually less to allow time for coffee. In a sense a mini pilgrimage. 

See as an example –  https://greentau.org/2026/04/20/mindful-sauntering-high-as-the-heavens/

Mindful Sauntering: High as the Heavens

The following material is as an aid to reflection whilst gently walking in a green space.

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;

    I will sing praises to you among the nations. 

For your loving kindness is as high as the heavens;

    your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 57:9,10

High Flight   by   JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE JR.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air ….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. 

1 John 3:1a