WALKING IS THE PACE OF THE SOUL - MENTAL WELLBEING

(This is the script of my Pause For Thought on Vanessa, BBC Radio 2, on June 29th 2022... The theme was Mental Wellbeing)

 

I coined a phrase last year that says “we sometimes don’t learn what we have learned”. We learned so much over these last two strange years. Are we going to travel on into whatever the new normal is and leave the learning behind.

I mean surely most of us rediscovered how good a walk is for our mental wellbeing.

They say that when we walk we move at the same pace as the soul. If that is true, I need to slow down. The diary flies - planes, trains and automobiles and all that. 

Personally I find that my mental health is closely connected to my emotional health and even closer to my spiritual health.

I had an interesting experience last summer. I have mentioned before how much my wife Janice and I love Ballycastle beach on Antrim’s north coast.

For some reason this particular evening I was walking back home along the beach on my own. My soul had last slowed down to the right pace but I still had my head racing. 

I can only describe it as God shouting at me when I sensed someone saying that I needed to get rid of the ear phones. So, I hastily turned off the recent Wallflowers record and breathed in.

Suddenly I was able to take in all that was going on around me. From the distractions cluttering my life I started focusing in on every refraction of sea and sand and sky.

Turning off the music I got to listen, to really listen to the quiet of the ocean’s big blue wonder. Of course it wasn’t silent. But the quiet rhythms of the sea. Gentle waves landing and then that sweet soothing sounds of water lapping on the shoreline. 

The sand Martin were swooping down around and back. The sun was doing that wonderful thing it does before it says goodnight, throwing a beam of light across the sea. I felt I could nearly walk across it.

It was like I’d tuned in to the earth’s allure, the night sky’s encryption. It was like God had prayed a benediction of blessing over my mind and heart and soul. When I got home I felt so refreshed.

More of it over this summer time.