"I would walk 500 miles..."

The Archdiocese has helped sponsor a very interesting contest throughout the month of May. The contest is for all the employees and their families and is called "500 miles of May" or something along those lines. An outside wellness company has set it up, and all those interested signed up in teams of 5. The pedometers were mailed to each person near the end of April, and at midnight on May 1st, the walking began.

I joined a team with my brothers Matt and Tony, along with Andy Cain and his wife (Andy is a math teacher at Ritter). We took the name "The Wet Bandits" (my brother's choice) as an ode to our family's favorite movie - Home Alone.

With athletics and things of a similar nature, my family is full of really competitive people. So in an effort to not let my team down, I decided, in the first week of the competition that I would walk from Ritter to Malachy after school and then walk back to Ritter the next morning. The funny thing was that it didn't really vault us up the leaderboard, but that isn't why I write this post.

G.K. Chesterton once said something along the lines of "a machine is only good when it gets you away from machines and encourages you to go out and enjoy a fresh field of clover." To that extent, this little pedometer has been a life saver. Last Sunday, my brother Tony and I went out for a 10 mile walk (at that point we just wanted the contest to be over more than anything) and our other brother who is not in the contest tagged along for fun. We had three hours together of talking, laughing, and encouraging each other in our various states of life. When I walked to Ritter, I saw lots of things that I NEVER notice when I drive. Once every couple of weeks I'll hit up the Starbucks at 56th and Lafayette. In walking past there, I realized that there is also a locally owned coffee shop in the same shopping plaza.

This walking thing has been one of the most spiritually enriching activities I've been a part of for a while (excluding the Sacraments of course), and I never would have thought it would be so great! Maybe God is calling you to take a walk today!