Sabbath & “Stretchy-Leggers”
In the fall of 2020, my husband and I packed our life into a couple of suitcases and moved from America to England for his year-long graduate program.
Moving to a new country in the first year of the Covid pandemic wasn’t the best timing, as we soon found ourselves in a lengthy lock-down with few options for exploring our new country beyond trips to the supermarket or going for walks.
Those daily walks became a lifeline for us.
We quickly discovered a wealth of footpaths (public trails), parks, bike paths, and country lanes crisscrossing our town and the fields surrounding it. And we started to notice surprising aspects of British walking culture. For one thing, people take it incredibly seriously.
One day I flipped through a guidebook for circular walks in the area and learned that walks less than 7 miles fell into the category of “stretchy-leggers” (merely a stretch of the legs). It was quite common to see couples or groups walk through town in sturdy hiking boots, all-weather jackets and daypacks. The local dogs knew the walks so well they would trot through the maze of paths, far ahead of their owners, with a brisk and focused confidence. I thought I liked walking, but my country of residence took the pastime to a whole new level.
One afternoon we stumbled across what become my favorite walking tradition – the Sunday afternoon winter walk, which lasts several hours and ends with a stop at a café for a whipped cream-topped hot chocolate. As we stood in line that day, we were surrounded by families and groups of friends who had spent half the day walking together.
As our time in the UK has extended from one year to nearly four, I’ve learned that going for a long, rambling walk on Sunday afternoon is a national pastime (as is a wonderful thing called “roast dinner”).
This was a counter-cultural concept for me.
I grew up in a highly active family, where weekends were time for the projects and hobbies you couldn’t do during the week. Sundays were packed with two church services, a quick lunch and whatever activity could squeeze in, like landscaping or washing the car. Walks were for assuaging your guilt over lack of exercise, not a way to spend an entire afternoon.
What I learned from the Sunday afternoon walk in England was the sense of unhurriedness. You’d go out with no timetable for when to return – you’d go simply to be outdoors and enjoy being alive.
Learning to go for a walk without an end time (or even a destination) has become an exercise in Sabbath keeping for me. It’s a time set aside for rest, for renewal, for connecting with others, for enjoying God’s creation, for stepping away from screens and task lists.
In Exodus 20:8-10, God gives this direction to Moses and the nation of Israel,
““Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…”
What does it mean to keep a day holy?
Marva Dawn, author of a profound book called Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, say this,
“For six days a week human beings are involved in the act of making, shaping, and transforming the world. So, we take one solid period of time, twenty-four hours, to change our relationship to the world — to refrain from acting upon it, and, instead, to stand back and celebrate the grandeur and mystery of creation.”
One thing I’ve loved about moving to a new culture is that it gives many opportunities to see how differently people do life. And opportunities to ask myself – will I adopt this new way of doing things or keep to what I’ve known?
Life in the UK has helped me to enter the grandeur and mystery of creation, and of Sabbath-keeping, in a new way through the practice of taking a Sunday walk. This is a practice I hope to take with me into the rest of my life: stepping away from shaping God’s good world for a time – to simply enjoy it.
