{"id":27368,"date":"2020-07-12T10:17:32","date_gmt":"2020-07-12T17:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=27368"},"modified":"2020-07-12T10:17:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-12T17:17:32","slug":"henry-thoreau-his-lovely-spiritual-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2020\/07\/henry-thoreau-his-lovely-spiritual-practice.html","title":{"rendered":"Henry Thoreau & His Lovely Spiritual Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Today is Henry David Thoreau\u2019s birthday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Noting that reminds me of his life and gifts. One was his discovery of a spiritual practice I think is really, really worthy.<\/em><\/p>\n

He describes it in an essay, Walking<\/a>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

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I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks \u2014 who had a genius, so to speak, for\u00a0sauntering<\/em>, which word is beautifully derived \u201cfrom idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going\u00a0a la Sainte Terre,<\/em>\u00a0to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, \u201cThere goes a Sainte-Terrer,\u201d a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from\u00a0sans terre<\/em>, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.<\/p>\n

Henry Thoreau<\/p>\n