Journey and wandering

Lynne Baab • Thursday August 28 2025

Today I invite you to think about wandering. Here’s something my artist husband Dave might say about a Seattle neighborhood with gorgeous old houses: “I wandered around Capitol Hill looking for a Victorian house I wanted to paint.” Here’s something I might say about our trip to London 14 years ago: “I loved wandering around looking at all that gorgeous architecture.” Those statements reflect one dictionary definition for wander: “to walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way.”

In his book Long Wandering Prayer, David Hansen argues that walking aids prayer. He recommends leisurely and casual walks where our minds can flow into a variety of prayer topics without stress and without a great deal of structure. Wandering prayer in his book title can refer to two things: (1) walks that aren’t highly structured or goal-oriented, and (2) the kind of mental wandering we often do when walking, which can draw us into prayer.

Structure helps us set up habits to meet with God. A daily prayer time upon waking. A psalm every night at bedtime. A weekly prayer time with a spouse or friend. Consistent church attendance. A Sabbath day.

Structure can also cause us to miss some of God’s gifts to us. When Dave wants to find a Victorian house to paint, he wants to find a house and setting that grab him and speak to him. He can’t plan in an organized way to find that kind of house and yard. He usually finds it by wandering around in a neighborhood with a lot of Victorians, looking at the houses, but also looking inside himself for an attraction or reaction. In a similar way, prayer while wandering physically or mentally can help us perceive new things outside and inside. God can guide our thoughts and prayers.

Part of why I wanted to write a post about wandering and prayer is because of the title of the Christianity Today article about pilgrimage that I quoted from two weeks ago. The article’s title, “Wandering as a Form of Worship,” resonates beautifully with the book Long Wandering Prayer that I loved when it came out in 2001. However, wandering in the physical sense is not a significant part of pilgrimages. Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s description of pilgrimage, which I wrote about two weeks ago, includes intentionality. Pilgrimages usually involve walking historic paths toward spiritually significant destinations. Or visiting a family cemetery or specific battlefield. Pilgrimages are not a form of wandering, as I understand it.

In addition to intentionality, Calhoun suggests that careful attention is the other major component of a pilgrimage. This overlaps with wandering prayer. The joy of wandering is noticing. The best wandering includes paying attention to architecture, gardens, trees, flowers, clouds, the wind on our face, the movement of our bodies, and the thoughts sweeping across our minds. Those observations and thoughts can be a strong call to prayer. Pilgrimages often include that kind of noticing along the way. Maybe the author of the Christianity Today article was thinking about the mental wandering that happens on a pilgrimage, a type of wandering that can guide our thoughts and prayers into fresh directions.

In Long Wandering Prayer, David Hansen notes that most Christians don’t understand the way movement of our bodies can aid in praying over long periods of time. Many people over the centuries have noticed the relationship between physical activity and mental wandering, and Hansen believes that the thoughts that arise as we are walking can help us grow in prayer. I find it amusing to note that the phrase “wandering prayer” can describe the way our prayers can wander all over the place as we pray in any setting. Human minds jump around! We don’t have to be wandering physically to experience wandering prayer. Yet physical movement somehow helps the Holy Spirit guide the wandering of our minds into fruitful directions for prayer.

You may have reservations about wandering around or letting your thoughts wander. You’re in good company. The idea of wandering can be associated with unfaithfulness. Let me give you another, very different online definition of wandering: “to be unfaithful to one's spouse or regular sexual partner.” One of my favorite hymns, “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing,” contains this line: “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” God caused the people of Israel to “wander in the wilderness” for 40 years because of their disobedience and faithlessness (Numbers 32:13).

Fear of faithlessness can motivate us not to embrace any kind of wandering. So we need to think clearly about what makes wandering helpful for faith. I suggest that, just like for pilgrimages, our intent matters. If we wander physically or mentally for the purpose of praying, we have set out to meet with God, always a good thing. As I have described above, our attention matters, too. Are we willing to pay attention to the gifts that come to us through our senses as we wander and pray?

Lord of the journey, help us find opportunities to walk, move, or ponder in a leisurely and casual way, with prayer as our purpose. In all things, we ask for your Holy Spirit’s guidance to feel your presence and turn to you in prayer. Help us pay attention to unexpected gifts from you.

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Next week: Journey on Creator’s Good Road. Illustration by Dave Baab: Victorian house in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

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Lynne Baab