Last year Malcolm Ferguson sent me an essay on walking by Henry David Thoreau who wrote it in 1861, the year before he died. In this essay Thoreau tells us that he walked at least four hours a day, sometimes for pleasure, he says, but sometimes, I’d guess, in his work as a surveyor.Thoreau walked ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day, usually heading southwest from his front door, sauntering ( a favourite word) through woods and meadows, field and swamps, shunning the roads and sometimes viewing the distant farms and villages from a favoured hillltop.

Thoreau knew the outdoors as he knew his himself, and he knew that world because he walked, and treasured the time he spent away from house and shelter. He tels the reader: “If you are ready to leave father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child and friends, and never see them again - if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled (all) your affairs, (and are a free man), then you are ready for a walk.”

Few of us are would make this sacrifice for the sake of a saunter, but neither then did Thoreau. And yet his overstatement catches the sense of freedom which we all feel when we walk out of the front door and into a journey whether we’re walking around the block or across the continent.

Malcolm, thanks for this essay, because after reading this it I thought I’d write an essay of my own - on walking - when I next preached here in Thoreau’s own hometown. And then I I decided to prepare for the writing of this sermon by walking from where I live in Jamaica Plain to Concord.

It’s about twenty-five miles and I thought I’d do it in two days. And why did I decide to do this? Well, I wasn’t sure, maybe just to see what I might see.

A bit later I stopped at the camping goods store, Moore and Mountain, once here in Concord - now in Andover, and told my plan to the proprietor, my friend, Alan French. Immediately he offerred to join me. I was pleased and a bit daunted.

You see, Alan French has been for twenty years the driving force behind the creation of the Bay Circuit Trail, a 200 mile footpath which now encircles the city of Boston between Routes 128 and 495. It winds through 21 towns and connects 85 already-protected areas. Several miles of the Trail go through Concord, starting at the original site of Thoreau’s hut, going through the Town Forest and then down the Concord Pike, dividing into two paths near the center of town, then entering Acton and Bedford .

Now to make possible this trail, a reality in some towns and a hope in others, Al has negotiated with state agencies, town conservations commissions, state senators and representatives, hiking colleagues, outraged abbutors and more organizations than I could remember. He has walked those two hundred miles some five or six times. Al, would you kindly stand and let us recognize you?

And so it was that Alan French, three confederates and I walked the 25 miles from Hampstead Road in Jamaica Plain to the center of Concord on Thursday and Saturday of this week just past.

On our saunter we saw a world we’d only have glimpsed, had we been driving. We passed the filthy corner underneath an underpass where the streetfolk of my hometown sleep at night. We walked a bit of the Arnold Arboretum and passed the one remaining farm within Boston’s city limits.We strolled by the fairways of the Putterham Golf Club, stopped for coffee at the Chestnut Hill Mall, tramped a bit of the Hammond Pond Reservation, saw some grand Victorian homes on Beacon Street in Newton Center, tested the echoes under Echo Bridge at Newton Upper Falls and walked perhaps two miles along the banks of the Charles River.

On the second day we walked the lovely woods in Weston and Lincoln,climbed Castle Hill and crossed Trout brook, and since it was getting late, walked Route 126 direct to Concord Center.

We crossed Route 128 once, the Charles River twice, Route 9 three times and the MBTA tracks of the Riverside line four times.

We learned again the blessing of companions, shade, drinking water, maps - well, not always - and the instruction of almost everything we passed, were we but there to see and learn.

To be sure, our ambulation of a mere twenty-five miles is nothing compared to the hikes of those who walk the 2200 miles of the Appalachian Trail or the 2700 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. Nor can that lovely walk along the Charles River (between Newton Upper and Lower Falls) compare to the wonders one would see on the John Muir Trail in California. But - so what?

The wonder is in the walking. The slower we go the more we see. The more we see the more we learn. The more we learn the more we love this land. That is the mantra of all who walk - not just for recreation but for re-creation. Whether you walk the dog in the morning or take the children to school or hike alone up Mount Moosilauke - a walk has much to give you for the smallest investment. And you can find that “much” in the most unlikely places.

When our family moved from Sudbury to Boston some forty years ago, we came to realize that cities like Boston are places where you can walk.You can walk from five neighborhoods to Boston’s business district in twenty minutes. We walked - sometimes with the aid of bus and subway - to shop, to church, to Symphony, to meet friends, or simply to discover the life of a real community; it beats televisio. Walkers enjoy a freedom not otherwise available.

It’s the way life used to be for some of us, who remember walking to school for sometimes an hour in sun, rain and snow, and we thought nothing of it, nor did our parents think us ill-used. When my birth family lived in Rochester NY, we walked to Monroe High, Cobb’s Hill Park, Central Presbyterian church, the Capitol theatre and sometimes to the fascinating banks of the Erie canal south of the city. Perhaps, our children and grandchildren will someday enjoy this freedom.

For, when our nation has accomplished the huge, and presently inconceivable task of balancing the use of the car with walking and public transportation, and the immense but eventual re-arrangement of our homes, schools, markets and working places, this could just happen..

So, now I ask the question behind everything I’ve said so far. Why walk? What is the why of walking? And it’s clear we walk for several reasons - to get to a place where we have something to do - school, work, shopping, a medical exam, lunch with a friend, getting the dog ourside. We also walk for exercise - to tune up the body. We also walk for pleasure.

We also work to witness to and support important causes. Think of the joy you see on the faces of those finish the twenty miles of the Walk for Hunger. And all the other walks. Remember Peace Pilgrim who walked across the country in the 1950’s to protest nurclear armament? And did you read of seminarian Judy Howard who walked across this country to witness to her faith in Jesus? You may never heard of the Quaker farmer who decided to give up his car. He walked from his farm in southern Ohio to the Registry office in the state capitol, Columbus, to turn in his driver’s license. When he finally did so, the clerk looked at him in consternation and said, “You could have mailed it in.” Walking is a way of witness.

But there is another reason for walking. Walking is a way to pray or meditate. It takes many forms.

Monks or cloistered nuns read their prayerbooks while walking slowly in the monastary gardens. Visitors to Chartres cathedral or the National Cathedral in Washington, or come to local churches here, some of them UU, walk the ancient mandala of the labyrinth, thus to experience the threefold cycle of seeking, finding and returning.

On holy days Christian congregations in liturgical churches process around the sanctuary while singing chants, and sometimes go outside the church and circumambulate the building as an act of praise. Walking the stations of the Cross are a form of Catholic piety. Catholics walk and pray the stations of the cross, and Christians of all sorts walk the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem to experience the passion of Christ on his way to the cross.

Walking is a form of Buddhist meditation. Here you focus on the steps you take instead of your breathing, attentive to the impress of each footstep and allowing the rhythm of those steps to calm, collect your mind.

And then there’s the great tradition of pilgrimage - the hadj which Muslims take to Mecca, the Buddha’s way in India, the journey to Jerusalem for Jews with the visits to Yad Vashem, the Wall, Megiddo, Masada.

For Catholics it’s Rome, the homeland of the faith, but Catholics find many other pilgrim destinations - Lourdes, Walsingham, Canterbury, Croach Patrick in Ireland, Medjugorie in Yugoslavia, Chimayo in New Mexico, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. This list does not begin to include the countless holy sites, great and small, which people visit in droves every year. Pilgrimage in the second millenium is well and thriving. Why, even we Unitarian Universalists have our sacred sites - the unitarian churches and congregations in Transylvania, including your own partner church in Sekeleykereshtur, sometimes including a visit to the ruined prison where the founder of our faith, Francis David, died.

Of course, many people fly to these shrines, but the significant act is walking - around the kabala in Mecca, down the aisle of St. Peter’s Rome, up the mountain of Croach St. Patrick in Ireland or climbing the four mountains sacred to the Buddhism in China.

You see, the pilgrim aims to experience the significance of the event which made a particular place a pilgrim site - the enlightenment of prince Gautama, the proclamation of Islam by Muhammed in Mecca, the worship at the temple in Jerusalem, the martyrdom of Becket in Canterbury, the appearing of Mary to the six young people in Medjugorie or to a peasant named Juan Diego at Guadalupe.

Buddhists emphasize not so much the destination, but the journey and

the wisdom that may come en route, whether one reaches the site or not. In Tibet some of the devout journey by a series of total prostrations interrupted only by sleep and meals, some 108,000 prostrations in all.

When I went to Norwich in 1978, I got off the train at a crossing called Thetford and then I walked for the next two days to Norwich. I passed a meadow full of rabbits and fields of rape and grain. I passed race track from whech the snarl of racing cars combined with the roar of overhead jetfighters from a nearby base wrecked the quiet for miles around. I passed a gypsy wagon in someone’s back yard and I rarely passed the local pub without stopping for refreshment. I faced the perils of walking the superhighways and the high-hedged one-car-wide country roads. And I do believe that walk helped me appreciate my visits to the churches and cathedral of Norwich and the shrine built to the memory of St. Julian of Norwich, whose wonderful book we studied in this church some years ago.

Walking is not just a way of enlightenment. It is a means of prayer.

The real sermon today is not what I’m saying, but the walking which led up to the sermon, and of which this sermon is a mere reflection. We were acting out the meaning of this sermon, that is, experiencing a different way of life, life in a two or three mile-an-hour world, a world where we stop to see not just a lovely river and a shady wood and a quiet garden, but traffic roaring along at seventy miles an hour or caught in gridlock beneath a blazing sun. To see a roadside littered with paper, cigarette butts and plastic bottles, or see the faded remnants of a once prosperous New England milltown or an old barn painted in fading garish colors. We walk to see, to see all and know it and love it, not because it is either beautiful or ugly, but because it is part of our life - ours to appreciate and ours to learn from.

We walked to show you that the slower we go, the more we see; the more we see, the more we learn; the more we learn, the more we love this land, and all its people, and not just our land but creation itself, God’s own rich gift to us.

We commend to you, we preach to you, the simple joy and lessons of walking. Walk to church or store; walk your neighborhood; walk to Lexington or Lincoln - just for a lark. If you have no reason, that’s the best reason. You haven’t time? Make time, take time, it’s yours, but only if you take it. Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life forfeiting the pleasures that could be yours but missed because you thought you didn’t haven the time.

The three-mile-an-hour world is a world which takes time but offers us the blessings of a wisdom and a piety which will nourish your soul more than all the self-help books on the shelf and all the online self-help seminars you could google in a month.

And if you walk this world, if only from time to time, you’ll understand what Thoreau meant when he said at the end of his essay on walking:

“And so we saunter toward the Holy Land, when one day the sun shall shine more brightly than it has ever done, shall shine perchance into our minds and hearts, and light up our lives with a great awakening light, as warm, serene and golden as the riverside in summer.”