Notes from my Knapsack 1-4-18

Notes from my Knapsack 1-4-18

Jeff Gill

 

Let's take a step forward

___

 

We have a new year. Congratulations!

 

Yes, yes, I know, we just held on until the big blue marble rolled all the way around the fireball one more time. But that's not nothing. So well done, all.

 

And we roll on. It's funny that we have such a linear concept of time when in fact we can just sit on the sofa and time still passes. We neither need to march on or roll down the river or put the pedal to the metal. Sit still, and time still passes. Quite well.

 

Many of us have had the chastening experience of losing a loved one, and being almost startled to shock and surprise that the world still turns, the day blurs into night and then dawns afresh, after the loss of someone around whom our world revolved.

 

That's the personal, the emotional side of time's inexorable passage; the physicists get impatient when a layman with little math such as myself ask about a point in space that is perfectly still, because apparently it doesn't quite exist. Or it does, I'm actually not sure.

 

But I know as I sit and type, I'm hurtling at hundreds of miles an hour to the east as the globe spins; the solar system rotates as a whole around the Sun; about the galactic center our puny set of orbiting rocks moves in stately array – and the Milky Way galaxy itself turns, even as it hurtles in . . . some direction. Up? Out?

 

And I do nothing, if you count typing this column on a laptop as nothing, which some would, and I won't argue. Burning calories I'm not. Yet time passes, and the world turns.

 

Which is where, in this new year, though the cosmos doesn't need it, I feel the need for motion. For more movement. And I share this because I'm not alone. My doctor hints at it (with me, he's more direct), and all the health departments and public agencies say the same: we all need to move more.

 

It's too easy to see marathoners and ironmen and ironwomen in exercise togs and with high-tech gear and the stickers saying "26.2" on the back of their vehicles, and think "well, not me." I'm out of that loop enough I spent months wondering some years back why I kept seeing "13.1" on trunks and rear windows in front of me.

 

What we don't all have to do is run half, or even quarter marathons. We just need to move. It can help, even in modest doses. I can quote studies to you, but guiltily, we all know it. Get up and move more than you do, and you will be better off for it – physically, psychologically, even spiritually. You can pray as you walk, you know. Kneeling and sitting are not Biblical mandates. They're customs. What about walking prayer?

 

You'll not see me mandating for one and all a prescription. That's not for me to say. Maybe every day, perhaps three days a week would be a great step forward for you. Is it a mile, or three laps of the house? Outdoor or indoor, or even just getting up every 30 minutes to stretch and flex a bit before you sit some more – we need to move.

 

My bias is towards metaphors of progress and movement towards a goal. That may or may not be the best way to look at life, or how to deal with setbacks or the treadmill that life can be in some seasons, but I want to commend to one and all, and commit myself in public for 2018: let's get a move on.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's a recovering runner who just wants to get back to walking more. Tell him how you are on the move at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.