Though I have always loved long walks, it was only recently in my life that I learned the joys of the German tradition of taking a walk on New Year’s Day. It can be a stroll or a hike, but is usually done with others — family or friends. If you have been a reader of our blogs, you will know that Almut and I have adapted this tradition, despite the rigors of the Minnesota winter, and made a joyful, meditative walk a part of our New Year tradition.
Our New Year’s walk is not timed or tracked for success. Though it is good to move on a day often dedicated to late sleeping, it is not done for exercise. It often has a goal, our favorite one being a walk across the frozen lake at St. John’s Abbey to a small chapel on an island with an exquisite statue of Mary as a pregnant teenager (you can find our post and pics about this adventure here…). But we have also simply done walks in a park or on city streets.
Though the walk is usually not done alone, it still invites solitude and an attitude of wonder. Our conversation is rarely directly spiritual, but is often about the wonder of the day, some interesting formation of snow, a remarkable tree, marks of flood water or ice storm, or some memory from the last year or hope for the new. In those moments that it is deepest, it is nevertheless a funny sort of solitude, the sharing of solitude and awe with one another. Each one’s solitude is shared but also reserved for one’s own rumination.
It is as though we carry together with us some holy thing, perhaps something like the way Mary and Joseph carried the holy child about whom such wonders had been foretold. Surely there are diapers and disagreements and the nagging sense one took the wrong turn twenty minutes ago. But there is still something we carry together.
This New Year’s walk will be different in that we will indeed have Hannah to carry between us — a late gift of God, and a constant reminder of the presence of God with us. When we carry her in quiet moments, cradling her like a holy gift, we feel it most intensely. I first learned to carry Hannah in the hospital, where the nurses kindly showed the new Papa the various tricks of how it is done. You support her weight evenly, ready to contain her if she moves, surround her for protection, and bend into her as though you would draw her into your heart.
And so I carried her in the rose-dawn light on her first day while saying morning prayer. And so most every evening I carry her and watch as she falls asleep for the night. And so I have learned what it is to carry an unexpected, holy gift and to be aware of her, even through the fatigue and grumpiness of everyday life.
So today we invite you to take a New Year’s walk, and be gently and graciously aware of the gifts you carry. You may have collected those gifts over the last days with the exercise of looking back and forward. If not, you will still know some that you carry, also the sorrows, which need attention. Walk with someone else, and share their solitude. Or walk with your own soul, speaking gently to it. Cradle your beginning of the new year as it would be a child.
But most importantly walk and give the holy a chance to break through. You cannot control it. But if you are able to recognize it, you can welcome it when it comes.
Peace to you on this pilgrimage.