Book Review: God Walk - Highly Recommend

I talked in a previous post about a book recommendation I saw on Facebook for a book on walking as a spiritual practice. My friend linked to a Renovare podcast with Nathan Foster and the book's author, Mark Buchanan. The book, God Walk: Moving at the Speed of Your Soul, was outstanding! I highly recommend it, whether or not you practice walking. Buchanan has such a distinctive voice, uses excellent illustrations, and explores all the spiritual benefits of walking (if that isn't too emphatic a description!). Plus, I adore books that recommend other books. I had to go back through the entire book to make a list of the book, poem, and movie suggestions (27 of them). Read the notes at the end. Well worth the investment!

God walked and urges us to walk with Him. Walking is an automatic and often undervalued ability. Buchanan breaks down the many uses of walking for spiritual nourishment. He recommends 3 miles per hour as "God speed." He even breaks his book into 3 sections: Mile One - Setting Out; Mile Two - Making Tracks; Mile Three - Pressing On. Various chapters cover forms of walking: walking as exercise, as friendship, as prayer, as remembering, as suffering, as healing (to mention more than a few).

As much as I appreciated the structure of this book, I loved the stories and illustrations. He retold the prodigal son's story to illustrate how we retrace our steps to recover lost things. A story about Wab Kinew explored how walking works out your pain and your identity. In discussing the fascination some have with "The Walking Dead," he urges the reader to be "the walking living," an incarnation of Christ to others around us. Some stories are fictional (one about a man in Poland seeking buried treasure); some are taken straight from his own family life (one about his perilous, but worthwhile, drive up the Amalfi Coast, and another about grace and youthful accidents - don't miss the footnotes for this story).

Despite my struggle with memory these days, I relished his chapter on walking as remembering. Walking seals perceptions and memories tied to the location. I've noticed this with audio books. I can bring to mind the exact locations along the road where I encountered certain bits of the story if I listened while driving. But, it is true of walking, as well. As he writes, "The texture of each moment was tied to the footfall of each journey." As the Israelites walked in the wilderness, Moses urged them to remember.

Buchanan emphasizes how it isn't always easy to find and follow the good way. "Ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." (Jeremiah 6:16) We need the Holy Spirit and God's Word. I loved a small passage about gray areas that require discernment. (When to submit to authority - Romans 13 - and when to resist - Revelation 13; grace that prompts change or grace that "merely perpetuates abuse and keeps letting the abuser walk away unchanged"; when our love and compassion is pure and selfless, and when it is "enablement or codependence or false altruism.")

Mark Buchanan earned the 8 endorsements inside the front cover. I leave you with 2:

"Mark Buchanan has... written something for one and all that is thoughtful, compelling, and practical: this is essential reading for those keen to come to a greater appreciation of the interplay between the interior life and our bodies." - Gordon T. Smith, author of The Voice of Jesus

"With his trademark lilt and languorous style, Mark Buchanan saunters, but never rambles, down an ancient track nearly lost to the Christian tradition. His is an invitation not to get in more steps but to slowly walk with God himself. This book is a good gift to the global church." Jared Brock, author of A Year of Living Prayerfully