Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.
Most of us live life mostly in our heads, but our thoughts are not where real life is lived. Your thoughts may be memories of real experience, they may imagine experience yet to come, but they're not real experience. They're interpretations of the past and projections of what may come. They're illusions really, fantasies. Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real no matter how much they'd like to persuade you otherwise.
by Brian Smithson
The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now. Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own" (Matthew 6.34). You cannot meet God in the past or in the future, but only in the present. So, you must find a way to live here, now, "taking every thought captive" as St. paul taught (2 Corinthians 10.5).
This is why walking is a spiritual practice.
When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground. You awaken more fully to your senses. And your senses root you to this moment. But you can't be in this moment when you're galloping along, eyes fixed on the future (or fleeing the past) lost in your anxious, calculating, or ambitious thoughts.
You're a wise a woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse or lumbering camel, get out of your head, and walk the real earth for a while, aware of what's right around you. The feet of the God you aim to meet walked this earth; yours ought to as well.
Today, I'll take off my shoes and feel the ground beneath my feet. I'll wiggle my toes in the carpet, stroll in a garden, or walk into the kitchen or to the copier at work---and I'll pay attention while I'm doing so. Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).