Next In-person walk: Saturday, Sept. 12, 9-10 a.m.
Covenant Presbyterian Church back parking lot, 2222 at Mo-Pac, Austin
Next Zoom discussion: Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026, 10:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada), Zoom link is here.
By Janet Davis
Walk In: Losing our Lives by Letting Go of Density
How the Healing Comes
Healing comes less like a falcon
with mighty wings,
and more like an earthworm
that slowly, slowly moves
beneath it all, tightening up,
then stretching out, tightening up
and stretching out, a simple
two-part rhythm. Some days,
that is all the body can do.
Contract. Expand. Contract. Expand.
In the meantime, through this
artless act, what is dense
becomes porous.
In the meantime, what is stuck
and clotted gets moved around.
What is dead passes through,
is processed by the grit inside.
There are tunnels now in the soil of me,
thin channels of recovery—
a blessed loosening,
a gradual renewal. It’s unhurried, but
I feel the air, the rain,
the life coming in
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “All the Honey,” pg. 20
Questions
Where in your life are you sensing “high density”: a lack of flow, a sense of “stuckness” or a knot, hardness or resistance of some kind? Is there a belief, a conclusion, a long-held story of identity or meaning that feels clotted and fixed?
Take a moment to simply take a few deep breaths into whatever you just named, imagining the possibility of it becoming just a little more porous, a little less hard.
What “inch-by-inch” earthworm-like practices might you create or adopt to loosen that density, inviting porosity? A mantra? A ritual? A prayer or collect? A practice?
Center: Meeting the Holy One in Porosity
Wild Grace
Put me amidst life’s
simplest things
that give their lives to blooming
or quietly glowing
without reaching for a name.
Open me in a way
that allows silence
to be a deep source of nourishment.
Let me gather the great bundle
of my every mistake and shortcoming
into my arms like a vast bouquet
and thank it for making
a gentler and more honest place
out of my heart.
I want no spiritual mastery,
but to be porous like the earth
to the nourishing rain.
Dear God, if you, please,
no more of this distance.
Plant yourself in my body.
I want nothing
but to be alive
with Wild Grace.
by Chelan Harkin
Questions
Shame and regret are two dynamics or energies or forces that create stuck places and density in life.
I invite you to answer the poet’s invitation: “gather the great bundle of my every mistake and shortcoming into my arms like a vast bouquet and thank it for making a gentler and more honest place out of my heart.” Warning: you have to give up “spiritual mastery” to do this exercise.
Do you sense God’s wild grace or something else? Do you sense yourself to be a little more able to absorb God’s healing and nourishing love?
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Choosing to Let Life Flow Through Us
The Supple Deer
The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.
Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left
behind.
I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.
Not of the deer: To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.
By Jane Hirshfield, from Come, Thief (Bloodaxe Books, 2012)
Questions
The idea of meeting life with a sense of porosity can be terrifying. It is the opposite of being well armored. I struggle to know the power of porosity but this old Japanese Zen story gives me a sense of it (and reminds me of Jesus and his way). Unexpectedly, sometimes, choosing porosity is the most life-giving path.
During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived – everyone except the Zen monk. Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this monk was. When he wasn’t treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. “You fool,” he shouted as he reached for his sword, “don’t you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!” But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. “And do you realize,” the master replied calmly, “that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?”
Is there a “largeness” in your past, present, or future that you are being invited to relate to with porosity rather than armoring or resistance?
What might that choice look like for you? What would you need to let go? What would you want to embrace? How might you invite God to be a part of this new way?