Out for a walk

I’m very much a morning person. I love to see the sun rise and experience the first light of day, and to be up and about before most people have stirred from their beds. It helps that I wake up early quite naturally, even when I go to bed late. In fact, nowadays I almost never set my alarm, and when I do I never actually hear it because I’m awake on time to turn it off.

So I love afternoon church because I know I will wake up early without even trying and have the entire morning to enjoy the quiet, read my scriptures, write in my journal, play the piano, and just do all those things that I never seem to have time to do when church is in the morning. The day doesn’t fly by quite so fast, and I can take some time to pull myself away from the previous week and clear my mind and be ready for the week to come.

But sometimes the entire morning is a very long time to be cooped up in one place, especially when that one place is such a small student apartment. I can only take puttering around the tiny kitchen and the sparse living room and my cramped bedroom for so long, and for years now the coming of spring has meant the opportunity to escape the house on Sundays. In Provo as an undergraduate I would sometimes drive up Provo canyon and stop at Bridal Veil Falls, or Canyon Glen Park, or drive to the very top of Squaw Peak Road, and I would get out and just enjoy the cool air and the green trees and most of all the quiet. In more recent years I’ve preferred to avoid the car trip altogether. No one is out early on a Sunday morning, and I can get almost the same quiet just by walking around my neighborhood. During the winter when the weather drives me indoors I tend to forget how much I enjoy these Sunday walks, and then when spring comes and the sun rises a bit earlier and a bit warmer, and the birds begin chirping, I’ll suddenly remember this weekly ritual that I’d almost forgotten.

These Sunday walks did not come out of nowhere. When I was young my family would take Sunday evening walks whenever the days were long enough and the weather warm enough. After dinner my parents would send my brothers and me, and later my sister (when we were old enough to be trusted with the stroller) off ahead of them, and we would walk the mile downhill to the elementary school, to the grassy area around the flagpole by the main building. There we would play freeze tag or monkey-in-the-middle or just toss around a ball or a Frisbee until my parents showed up, and then just a little longer. When we were ready or when my parents were ready, we would head out again, to walk the mile back uphill. My parents would take the long way and we would take the shorter way and we would get home before my parents and begin taking out the trash for the Monday collection (not because we were particularly responsible children, but because we knew that this was our responsibility at the end of the walk and that mom and dad would expect the chore to be well under way by the time they arrived).

I remember a lesson in one of my Sunday school classes, probably at the older end of Primary, on keeping the Sabbath day holy. As part of the lesson, the teacher asked us to brainstorm things that were appropriate to do on the Sabbath and since everyone was saying all the standard answers like read scriptures and go to church, I thought I’d be a little more unique and raised my hand and suggested going on walks. My teacher, who had been nodding and saying “good” to all the responses before this, was a bit thrown off by my answer. “Taking walks?” she asked quizzically, and I immediately got the sense that my nonstandard answer was not exactly what she’d been looking for. Embarrassed, I quickly explained that my family took walks together on Sunday evenings, and she replied, “Oh, well I suppose if you’re out walking with your family…” and moved quickly on to the next response. I thought maybe she had been imagining people out for their daily exercise, but even when I pointed out that it was a family activity my response hadn’t met with overwhelming enthusiasm. I knew that not everyone took walks on Sunday, but until then it had never occurred to me that people might consider walking an inappropriate Sabbath activity. I certainly didn’t question my family’s Sabbath observance, but I wondered if maybe I ought to be careful about whom I told.

Now, of course, I am not the least apologetic about our family tradition, or about my own Sunday morning walks. I wouldn’t feel comfortable going out for a Sunday morning run, but I don’t necessarily think that when God gave us a day of rest, he meant that it had to be a day of sitting around. As a child, the Sunday walks were a wonderful family bonding experience that we couldn’t always have on other days of the week when we were running off to school and work and sports practices and music lessons and friends’ houses. And sitting around and being quiet is not always easy for children, it was a way of letting us get out some pent-up energy.

My walks nowadays serve a different purpose, but I see them as no less Sabbath appropriate. It’s a chance for me to be out and enjoy God’s world, and it gives me a chance to think and even to pray, and to do so apart from all the stresses and obligations of the rest of the week. Church is important, of course, and so are the scriptures, but there have been Sundays when I have gotten more out of my morning walk than any other part of my Sunday.

But I don’t want to wax too philosophical here because all I really mean is that spring is finally here, and that just makes me very, very happy.