Walk Cheerfully: Posted August 11, 2008

“Walk cheerfully over the earth,” George Fox advised,”answering that of God in everyone.” A couple of weeks ago, I took an illuminating walk  while on a vacation in the NW: One foggy, misty afternoon, my husband, my step-daughter, and I walked for almost an hour through the dunes of Oregon in bare feet! It’s probably been fifty years since I’ve walked that long and that far without wearing shoes.  Call me crazy but it seemed as if my feet were a little surprised to be unsheathed and unprotected but also, as happens in yoga class, pretty excited to be asked to do what nature intended for them to do. My toes reaching into the sand with every step, the muscles in my calves doing new work, aware with every step how I planted now this foot, now the other, I mused how I complain that I never hear Quakers talk about Fox’s “cheerfully” yet I, an inveterate walker, never consider how I walk! In yoga, in preparation for any standing pose, we’re often instructed to give attention to the four corners of our feet, the placement of our toes, etc. etc. Needless to say, I now consider the word “grounded” in a new, toe-tingly way!