Do you want to be in better health?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando.<\/em><\/p>\n

Are you feeling like you\u2019re about to flip out due to your current social isolation?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando.<\/em><\/p>\n

Feeling stressed, depressed or anxious?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando.<\/em><\/p>\n

Need to work through a problem with a friend?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando.<\/em><\/p>\n

Are you spiritually dry?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay. Assuming you don\u2019t read, speak or understand Latin, I\u2019ll explain. Solvitur ambulando<\/em>\u00a0means \u201cIt is solved by walking around.\u201d It\u2019s recommended in a book called\u00a0The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man<\/em>. The lessons contained in the book, however, often apply to both genders, and the book was co-written by a man and a woman.<\/p>\n

It says that many problems can be resolved or ameliorated by taking a walk. While acknowledging that walking can seem unexciting, so much so that the word for a person on foot — pedestrian — is also a synonym for \u2018dull\u2019 and \u2018ordinary,\u2019 the authors also tout walking\u2019s beneficial effects on our bodies, minds and souls.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not a regular walker, right now is a great time to give it a try.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the few things you can still get out and do.<\/p>\n

In support of their pro-walking platform, the book\u2019s authors quote numerous writers from the past who praised walking. Here\u2019s one example, from Alfred Barron, writing in his\u00a0Foot Notes, Or, Walking as a Fine Art<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>I walk chiefly to visit natural objects, but I sometimes go on foot to visit myself. It often happens when I am on an outward-bound excursion, that I also discover a good deal of my own thought….These [legs], when in motion, are so stimulating to thought and mind, they almost deserve to be called the reflective organs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Barron wrote that in 1875, but we can go back further than that. In the first century, the apostle Paul, in discussing the liberation of our human nature through Christ, wrote \u201cFor God has done what the law … could not do: by sending his own Son … to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,\u00a0<\/em>who walk not according to the flesh but [walk] according to the Spirit\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(Romans 8:3-4).<\/p>\n

These verses are in the lead-up to the Epistle for today. And sure, Paul is using \u201cwalk\u201d in a symbolic way, not in the literal sense the\u00a0solvitur ambulando<\/em>\u00a0book does. Nonetheless, Paul\u2019s use of \u201cwalk\u201d does mean literally to \u201ctread all around\u201d or to \u201cwalk at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Paul then, walking means the whole round of the activities of the individual life lived in the Spirit. And he\u2019s saying that walking in the Spirit is the way to the real life that is God\u2019s gift. In other words, we solve the problems of life by living them while embracing what God is doing for us.<\/p>\n

But many of the problems of life do not lend themselves to tidy solutions. Sometimes the solutions, such as they are, come only by muddling through the problems —\u00a0hoc solvitur per muddling<\/em>.\u00a0 We are experiencing that in our day by day struggles right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuddling through\u201d is usually defined as \u201cto continue despite confusion and difficulties,\u201d or as \u201cto succeed despite being ill-equipped or untrained.\u201d Well, doesn\u2019t that describe the reality of much of what we face in life, especially today?<\/p>\n

In fact, if we want a definition of what \u201cnormal\u201d is, muddling through probably works about as well as anything. Perhaps when we were young, we naively believed that for most problems there were solutions \u201cout there\u201d somewhere, and that, if we let the right people know about our difficulties or got in touch with the right agency or hired the right life coach or read the right book or whatever, things would be fixed or solved.<\/p>\n

But what has life taught us since? Yes, there are wise people; yes, there are helping agencies; yes, there is Siri and Alexa and Google. But in many circumstances, there\u2019s only so much others can do.\u00a0 We are living this out with the Coronavirus. So some of what remains is up to God and some is up to us.<\/p>\n

And that often means muddling through — putting one foot in front of the other, somehow doing what needs to be done today. Muddling through, which is a way of walking, means dealing with what comes up, tackling the immediate stuff. Along the way, we may even have to back out of previous commitments and leave some other good things by the wayside. We generally have to start from whatever mess we find ourselves in and muddle our way out. That\u2019s often exhausting, but, in fact, it\u2019s frequently the only way, because much of the time there are no big, one-stroke solutions to life\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

Part of the wisdom of some of the 12-step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, is that they don\u2019t focus on lifetime solutions; they talk about\u00a0daily<\/em>\u00a0solutions — staying sober one day at a time, for example. That\u2019s a muddling through sort of approach, but, remarkably, it is often the only way that works.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll recognize that muddling through is the opposite of efficiency, and there are always people and seminars and books ready to tell us how to be more efficient. But the trouble is, the world itself seldom runs efficiently. We see that right now. What\u2019s more, the situations in life that make it possible for us to do such things as \u2018grow in the Spirit\u2019 are seldom models of efficiency.<\/p>\n

For example, one of the places where it\u2019s possible for us to learn to care about others is the family, an institution that\u2019s never been accused of efficiency. Writer Eugene Kennedy notes that one of the ways men and women grow is by falling in love, a process that \u201chas never had high marks for efficiency.\u201d Falling in love, says Kennedy, \u201cpreoccupies and drains a man of his energy, making him moon around during hours when he should be working; and yet it is still the best experience he knows, the experience that opens the magic of the world to him.\u201d As for women, well, read\u00a0Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Further, Kennedy says, \u201cChrist lived an intensely human [read \u2018inefficient\u2019] life and he invites us to do the same. That\u2019s the whole meaning of Incarnation. …\u201d And he adds, \u201cMaybe the Spirit can only touch us and change us when we drop the armor of efficiency and are able to let ourselves out with all the rough edges of life showing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, it\u2019s the\u00a0framework<\/em>\u00a0in which we muddle that makes all the difference, and that\u2019s the heart of Paul\u2019s message.<\/p>\n

– We can muddle through in the \u201cflesh\u201d — in the dread that life has no meaning or purpose and that, in the end, everything and everyone amounts to nothing.<\/p>\n

– We can muddle through in the flesh — in the fear that some past misdeed, real or imagined, will haunt us for our lifetime.<\/p>\n

– We can muddle through in the flesh — believing that we are alone and that it\u2019s all up to us, and thus having little hope of resolving anything for the long term.<\/p>\n

Or — OR — we can muddle through in the Spirit — looking at things as they really are, but with the assurance that sin and death do not have the last word.<\/p>\n

Muddling in the Spirit means that as we face the problems of life, especially those that seem to defy solution, such as Covid-19, when all we have left to do is muddle through, we do not muddle through alone. We need to view our pains and losses and terrors and closed doors against the backdrop of what it means to walk in the Spirit —\u00a0solvendum est per muddling per spiritum<\/em>\u00a0— and then carry on, clumsily if necessary, but in certainty that God flows even through our inefficiency, when our heart is tuned to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you want to be in better health?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando. Are you feeling like you\u2019re about to flip out due to your current social isolation?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando. Feeling stressed, depressed or anxious?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando. Need to work through a problem with a friend?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando. Are you spiritually dry?\u00a0Solvitur ambulando. Okay. Assuming you don\u2019t read, speak or understand Latin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n