They Talk To Me Out There

You have noticed it and you have probably not mentioned it to anybody.

At the table, you ask how school was and you get a word. In the car, sometimes, you get a bit more. But out on a pavement, twelve minutes in, one of them will say something that they have plainly been carrying for a fortnight, and they will say it in the same voice they would use about the weather.

And then they will carry on walking.

The first few times it happened you probably thought it was a coincidence. It is not a coincidence, and you are not imagining the pattern, and there is a plain reason for it that has nothing to do with fresh air being good for people.

At a table, you are facing each other. Everything said is delivered to a face that is watching, and the watching is what makes hard things hard to say. A child working up to something difficult has to get it past your eyebrows, and they can see your reaction arriving before they have finished the sentence.

Side by side, nobody is watching anybody. You are both looking at the same road. There is somewhere else for the eyes to be, the silences are not awkward because walking fills them, and either of you can stop talking at any moment without it being a thing.

That is the whole mechanism. It is not mystical, and it is worth knowing plainly, because knowing it tells you what your job is.

He drew near, and went with them

There is a walk in Luke where two people are going somewhere with something heavy on them, and Jesus does something specific with how He joins them.

And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. (Luke 24:15, King James Version)

Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

Went with them. He does not stop them. He does not stand in front of them and address them. He falls in alongside and keeps walking in the direction they were already going.

And He asks a question and then He listens to a very long answer. They tell Him the whole thing, including the parts they have wrong, and He lets the entire account come out before He says anything of substance.

That whole conversation happens on a road, in motion, in the same direction. Nobody is sitting opposite anybody.

It is one of the most significant conversations in the Gospels and it takes place at walking pace, side by side, with the listening happening first and for a long time.

You are able to fall in alongside rather than sit opposite, and it has never once required you to face somebody to reach them. Luke 24:15 has Jesus join a walk already in progress and listen before teaching, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a pattern rather than a nice detail.

Your job is the first ten minutes

Here is what I think your job actually is, and it is smaller and harder than you would guess.

Say nothing much for the first ten minutes.

Not silence exactly. Ordinary remarks are fine. But no questions with a purpose in them. No how are you finding things, no is everything all right at school, no I have been meaning to ask you about.

Because a child can hear the difference immediately between walking with a parent and being taken for a walk in order to be asked something. The second one is an interview conducted outdoors, and once they suspect it, the pavement stops working and you have used up the one place where things get said.

So the first ten minutes are yours to waste. Talk about a bin. Say nothing at all. Let it be a bit dull.

And then, often, something arrives. Not always, and I want to be honest about that, because half the walks produce nothing at all and that is not a failed walk.

You are able to leave the first ten minutes empty, and it has never once needed filling with a question to be worth walking. The written word has the listening come first and at length on that road, and the Spirit of God is the one who is walking alongside while nobody says anything.

Walk with one, and ask nothing

So here is the last assignment on this site.

Walk with one of them, and ask nothing for the first ten minutes.

One child. Not the whole family, because the whole family is a different thing and the side by side effect needs one person beside you.

Ten minutes with no purposeful questions. Then just keep walking, and let whatever happens happen, and if nothing happens, walk home.

And here is the thing I want to leave you with, because it is the actual point. If nothing gets said, the walk was not wasted, and you were not doing it wrong. The walk is not a device for extracting a conversation. It is time spent beside somebody, and that is a good thing to have done with an evening whether or not anybody speaks.

Luke 24:15 has Him draw near and go with them before anything of significance is said, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on the quiet walks as well as the ones where something comes out.

You are able to walk beside them with nothing required of the walk, and it has never once had to produce anything to have been worth doing. Luke 24:15 puts the drawing near and the going with before the conversation, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with you both on an ordinary road.