In our town, we chose the “Lemgoer Wall” ruins, which is an old stonewall around the parameters of our town. This area is near to our homes and is a small park with lots of trees, water and other foliage. Lots of joggers, dog walkers and park goers enjoy this path around the town. Even though it is central and easy to reach, it is still quiet and peaceful there.

We start walking the path directly after our body prayer. We take the same route with a few detours every now and again, but it largely remains the same 6 kilometres route. Because we are already gathered together for the body prayer, we use the first part of our walk to talk about things that are on our minds. This exchange with others helps to sort out our feelings, thoughts and ideas. This way these thoughts are not constantly on our minds throughout the rest of the journey. Talking to others is good for us and allows us to let go of situations, thoughts, and feelings and enable us to continue the rest of the path in silence (without uttering a word).

There are different possibilities to use or fill the silent time so that you aren’t bombarded by random, mixed up thoughts, such as:

 

Breathing Exercises

You can try different breathing exercises while walking to control and track your breathing. We found that this book Contemplative Retreat by Franz Jalics to be very helpful.

Jesus Prayer

You can add the Jesus prayer to your breathing exercises. You pray inwardly to the rhythm of your breathing. There are many helpful points to this, but we won’t get into them. Personally, we found that a short Jesus prayer is helpful. Quite simply, as we inhaled taking in life and exhaled while inwardly saying ‘Jesus’.

 

Rhythm of your Steps

Another possibility is focusing on the rhythm of your steps. You can recite a verse or repeat a sentence that is important to you at that time. Another possibility is to pray while using the rhythm of your steps.

Blessing others along our path

We bless others because we want their best; we wish them well and want to their lives to be filled with goodness. We do this by praying, “ Lord, bless person X or Y.” or “Lord I place person X or Y under Your blessings. We bless the people, groups of people that we come in contact with while underway, known to us or are important to us for whatever reason. While underway we pass by houses, places, streets and so on. We bring these also into our prayers for blessings connecting these houses, places and streets to the people, groups of people that we know. We mostly do these prayers for blessings inwardly, too.