Day Five in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" 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, fantasies. Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real.

The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now. Jesus said, "Don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow has enough worries of its own." You cannot meet God in the past or 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.

This is why walking is a spiritual practice. When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground. You awaken to your senses, and they root to 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 woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse, 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 to the kitchen or copier---and pay attention while I'm doing it. Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).

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