Two Powerful Skills You Already Have

Walking and eating are two of the most fundamentally basic human skills—the kind of things we learn in infancy. But I have found that walking and eating are also two of the most powerful contexts for experiencing human connection. What do we suggest when we want to see someone? More often than not, it involves eating at some point. Or walking. Or both.

Somehow these two simple activities lend themselves brilliantly to relational growth—God himself walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, and Jesus was well known for eating with the “wrong” sorts of people. So it is that two of the most ordinary, most overlooked skills in the world—skills that even tiny children can master—are also some of the most useful for connecting with other people. Sometimes, you really don’t need to look past your own feet (or plate) to find what you need to grow your relationships with the people around you, or with God himself (walking outside has been a great benefit to my own prayer life). That’s what these two poems are about. I wrote the first one a couple of years ago. I wrote the second one yesterday, after lunch with a couple of friends.

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The Garden Path

The best place for discussion
Is a pathway in a garden
For when our Maker made us
A garden’s what he gave us
And when he came to speak with us
He walked along the path

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A Table For Three

Sandwiches and
Cups of coffee
Two faces
Across from me
A wooden bench
A simple lunch
I rise to leave
I am
Nourished