| Dear Friends:
I was delighted recently to hear a friend use the word "sauntering, " when referring to a person who was walking at a relaxed, leisurely pace. It was a reminder that in this hurried world of ours, sauntering is something we do not do very often. We always seem to be rushing to meet a deadline or running to catch a train and when we do take time for a walk, we often prefer a "power walk" to the more relaxed and contemplative pace of sauntering.
The spiritual benefits of sauntering, as well as the derivation of the word, are described by Henry David Thoreau in an essay on walking. He said, "I have met with but one of two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked for charity under the pretense of going a la | |
