Walking as a Spiritual practice with Mark Buchanan

What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.

But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way.

Buchanan reflects on the ways in which walking can be both a spiritual practice and a means by which we can deepen our connection to the earth beneath us, our fellow travelers, and the God we worship:

“Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attentiveness is listening and caring and noticing, cherishing, savoring, being awestruck, these things that we feel in a relationship. I am deeply loved by this person because they notice me. I think that that’s how God’s built it. And we can’t get that if we’re moving too fast, if we’re in a hurry.”

We hope you’re encouraged this Lenten season as you learn to walk at godspeed, seeing this embodied act as a profoundly spiritual practice.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Mark Buchanan.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Aristotle

Søren Kierkegaard

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

God Walk, by Mark Buchanan

Simone Weil
The Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku Koyama

Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit

Knowing God, J.I. Packer

Kai Miller

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.