New Page 1

Now that I am a mother, I notice children more. I watch them in stores and restaurants, at the pool and in church. I have learned that children move through life at their own pace. Ever try to take a 2-year-old on a straight-ahead, purposeful walk? I’m discovering that it just doesn’t happen. While eating lunch one day, I watched a man and a toddler take about 10 minutes to get from the car to a store down the block. The little girl had to stop and touch everything…the bushes, the newspaper stand, the paper bag on the sidewalk. Two-year-old children have their own agenda. For a 2-year-old, there is no sense of accomplishment with leaving point A in order to arrive at point B. The only reason for even venturing out the door is the prospect of the over-stimulating meander that takes place between point A and point B. When you are 2, the world is still a new and fascinating place. Everything deserves investigation.

“Naturalist and eco-theologian Jim Corbett has targeted this philosophy of travel of the 2-year-old in his book Goatwalking (New York: Viking Press, 1991). Having rather more knowledge of goats than toddlers, Corbett focuses on the round-about, over- and-under, onto-boulders-and-under-blackberries wanderings that these sure-footed, independent little animals conduct in their daily travels. Goatwalking, as Corbett calls it, is a mode of journeying that doesn't so much traverse the countryside as caress it. Without all their skills and attention focused on a destination, goatwalkers have the ability to feel the contours of the land under their feet and allow the earth itself to set their path. "Goatwalking" is obviously not an activity solely available to goats and 2-year-olds. Corbett encourages all of us to try this form of travel periodically. He calls goatwalking a form of "errantry." While we usually think of errantry as the journeys of medieval knights of the Round Table, Corbett makes the term both accessible and alluring for post-moderns. Errantry, he declares, means sallying out beyond society's established ways, living "according to one's inner leading.”[1]

Sadly, I haven’t met a whole lot of goatwalkers in my life. They are especially difficult to find at Christmas time. Instead of pilgrimages to holy sights, we are known more these days, for our pilgrimages to our favorite stores where, instead of focusing on the prophet’s word, we reflect on doohickeys, and instead of being attracted to Christ, we are attracted to shiny thing-a-ma-bobs. There is no time to meander off the beaten path. I can barely make it from point A to point B with intense focus.

Christmas, for many, has become an annual round of clutter parties, clutter schedules, clutter jobs and clutter motives. In the 21^st century clutter afflicts our lives like never before. Perhaps it is time we, like John, listen to another summoning voice, a voice that will sometimes lead us off the beaten path. Goatwalking may be a minority way of life, but it is not just reserved for goats and toddlers.

John the Baptist was a classic goatwalker. Just think about his description. He was decked out in his camel hair robe, living and preaching out in the wilderness, eating things most of us would get the willies just stepping on, John was definitely listening to the directives of an inner voice. While everyone around him was moving along the established path, or no path at all, John was inviting people to come out to the desert for a while. The power of John's witness was so enticing that people left their familiar, busy city streets and village squares to seek him out. Attracted by the flow of John's spiritual forces, these crowds goatwalked their way to this solitary voice in the wilderness, not knowing what to expect, yet filled with an inexplicable hope and anticipation. Imagine that inexplicable hope and anticipation in Advent?!

Now, although a new term for most of us, the act of goatwalking has always been a favorite way of encountering the God of the Bible. The Hebrews spent 40 years goatwalking through the wilderness, as they tried to discover the path that would lead them into a faithful relationship with God. Forty years might be a bit excessive these days, but, nonetheless, God has regularly chosen goatwalkers to be divine prophets and witness. Some of the strangest most independent and unpredictable people are found among the prophets. And it should come as no surprise to us then that it was to "professional" goatwalkers, the goatherds and shepherds camped out with their wandering flocks in the middle of nowhere, that the angels first announced the birth of Jesus Christ. The shepherds were in a space, not caught up in the busy-ness of city dwelling, but in the quietness of the meandering journey. The first people on the scene in Bethlehem, to worship and praise the tiny newborn king, were these simple, scruffy social zeros, the goatwalkers.  

You see, I don’t think these ordinary folk would have been tuned into that awesome news if they had been worrying about their mortgages, watching portable DVD players, or giving their sheep the latest style of hair cut. A goatwalker’s unique qualities include the ability to do nothing, depend on natural rhythms, concentrate on the present moment, and spend long nights devoted to quiet watching and reflection. It makes sense to me that so many religions originated among herders, and why so many church metaphors are pastoral.

As Christmas fast approaches, we may all be helped by consciously taking some time to slow our steps to try to see if we too can goatwalk into Bethlehem this year. I think a successful goatwalk requires three things of us. (For many of us these three things may seem all but impossible with the craziness of our lives.)

Goatwalking requires us to do nothing, go nowhere and lose hold. By doing nothing I mean, allow yourselves to be fully present to the moment. Consider each moment pregnant with God and all God has to offer. Open yourself to Christ being born in you this year. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Go nowhere means letting yourself sit more than walk; reap more than sow; take what God offers rather than what you can grab.

Find a sense of place this Christmas. Become a placed rather than a displaced person. Losing hold gives us the freedom to let God guide the way. The truth is, the most beautiful, meaningful things in life are never things we can hold on to anyway. This is true of our children, our spouses, our parents. The same is true of God. “This art of letting go, of emptying the self, is part of the paradox of truth grasped by goatwalkers.”[2] So throw away your cell phones and your beepers; at least set them aside every once and a while. Take time to light your own candles at home. Take some time to sit and watch the toddler get from point A to point B, or sit and stare out the window. Meander somewhere new, and give yourself permission to break from the frenzy of the season. If you are able to break from the raging river of commercial and social obligations, pull on your camel-hair coat, grab a baggie full of locusts and goatwalk your way to Bethlehem. You can set out on any path you choose. For whether you reach it or not depends on your sense of everything but direction. Happy goatwalking. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] Rev. Bob Taylor, Homiletics, Nov.-Dec. issue, 1993.