Contrary to popular advice, I’m not an avid fan of exercise. Not that I don’t think it can be life changing and good for one’s health… it just feels like I wasn’t born to exercise??? (I’m sure there would be many out there who would disagree with that notion.)
Anyway. Let’s just say, exercise isn’t what grabs me to the point where I make it one of the priorities of my day.
I do however, go for a walk most days. At quarter to five every afternoon, I endeavour to pack up whatever it is I’m doing, and according to the season I either squeeze, or begrudgingly change into my leggings and a pair of tekkies, and take myself and my earphones out for a very predictable four kilometre walk. That is, I literally open the gate, turn right onto the main road and walk two and a something kilometres alongside farm fields to the next village, breathe deep breaths for about two minutes and walk back again. It’s along the [at times rather busy] roadside, and every three to four minutes a truck comes hurtling past threatening to swipe the earphones right out of my ears and whisking the cap I [used to] wear right off of me, straight into the veld.
Anyway. The reason I do this is for my head. My easily congested, easily distracted, over thinking, at times over panicking, worried to the point of being unable to sleep, head. The forty five minutes I spend tromping along this road is forty five minutes well spent. Come rain, wind or shine, it somehow manages to clear the cobwebs right out of my skull. As much as I may not have wanted to go, by the time I get back I feel somehow brighter, and the air inside my lungs feels somehow thinner… the weight in my chest lighter, the resolve in my soul more decided.
As you might be able to imagine, in the years that I have been pressing flowers my default whenever I am outside is to look at the ground… always on the lookout for something beautiful to immortalise. To trap in time. Well, these walks I take in the late afternoons are no different – my eyes are always set on the ground… literally, the roadside. I almost always find my hands sweeping through long grasses and my eyes drawn to the little ‘weeds’ that grow inconsequentially alongside the road.
Until one day a few weeks ago. I was busy on my way back from this walk and I had switched my music off. All was a little unusually quiet, when three small things happened;
Firstly, I was looking towards the mountains in the distance to my left. Above them were some tiny grey clouds. One of the grey clouds was apparently very busy. I soon realised it was a flock of birds swooping and dancing hiiiiiigh up in the sky. I paused, and at that moment gave thanks that I had been privileged to have seen that.
Two minutes later I was concentrating on nothingness and the road ahead, when above me I heard the whisperings of wings. I looked up and to my absolute delight I saw a huge flock of birds flying low down just above my head. I stopped and stared, breathing in the angelic sound of a thousand silent flutterings over my head. It was utterly captivating. Once again, I gave thanks, and moved on. Almost home.
As I passed a field a short distance away from the gate to our house my attention was suddenly drawn to a flock of large white birds. Disturbed by something, they suddenly ascended from the grass up into the sky against the backdrop of the mighty Kasteelberg… the contrast of their whiteness and the echo of their calls stark against the normality of my everyday afternoon walk.
I stopped. Breathed in and lifted my eyes to the sky. It was clear that I was being asked to look heavenward in that moment. Why God? What do you want to say? I was reminded of something familiar… ‘Look at the birds of the sky… they do not worry about a single thing.’ I knew I was being asked to think about the way my life can become entrenched in anxiety.
When I got home, the first thing I did was to research the words, ‘Look at the birds of the sky…’ I knew it would take me straight to a specific place in the Bible;
Do Not Worry
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 LOOK AT THE BIRDS OF THE AIR; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For those who unbelieve run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:25 – 34
I was amazed because, while I do not specifically worry about food and clothes, I am prone to being filled with anxiety about many an everyday affair. I knew that what had happened in those few moments coming home, was that my attention had been drawn to something that would take me straight to this passage in the Bible. And from here I realised that what Jesus did when He said these words was to take our attention from our worry-filled minds to beauty; the birds, the flowers. And from this place He put our everyday worries into perspective.
I realised that the reason (something I have been pondering on for a quite a while now) my life has become focussed in such a concentrated way on things of the ground – on things of absolute beauty, is to remind me that I do not need to get caught up in anxiety. That there is a greater power at work, and that I simply need to trust. Thankfully, I am not the biggest force in my world.
Now maybe you are thinking at this point that you aren’t a person who follows the teachings of Jesus… what does this have to do with me? Perhaps you aren’t in a place where God or Jesus plays a role in your life. But what about beauty? Beauty speaks for itself. In itself, it is an absolute truth… it does not depend on you. It’s there, waiting to be found. My prayer is that it would lead you to it’s Creator.
But for the moment, let it lead you to joy, to a place of hope… distract you away from your anxieties, knowing that beauty causes us to see signs of life.
So, while beauty will never be able to take away the things that make us anxious, it’s magic is that it somehow allows us to make peace with our anxieties.