Out for a walk just around dusk, with the light starting to fade... The air felt lightly cool and faintly damp across my face, with little touches of something like chill when I passed the pine grove. The black-eyed susans are out, and Queen Anne's lace, lots of it--some full umbrils, flats as doilies; some gracefully incurving, some going into the gentle closed-hand clench in which these plants move from flower to seed. It was a quiet evening, which was exactly what I needed.

There it is: you think you're over whatever-it-is, and then it comes back, like an old-fashioned tertian ague or, more modernly, like a bout of the shingles. Never mind what set it off this time, but last Sunday I found myself back in that bad old state, the one I thought I'd left behind. It's an ague of the soul, not of the body; but at least I know its proper name, and what symptoms to expect.

But for a while there, it was really uncomfortable. I couldn't settle to anything, couldn't read, couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate, was snarly and emotional with my nearest and dearest, got flashbacks (fascinating, but mildly unnerving). This particular ague also involves nasty hiccups of anguish and anxiety, which I do not particularly enjoy--especially because I thought I'd got over them. Damn.

And then I thought, a walk would do me good. So I strapped on my sandals and headed for the path out to the mall, a peaceful place. Simply being outdoors, getting my spiritual toes down into the dirt of the world I live with--that always helps. I thought of Lewis's observation, that we humans need to live in God's eternity and in this present moment, and how true that observation is. Living fully in this moment has a sweet soundness to it, like the taste of almonds or apples. Maybe that's why the incarnation is so important?

As I walked through a quiet field where frogs were garumphing, words came into my head unbidden and at first seemingly unconnected to anything--a randomness. You probably know the feeling: a phrase drifts past your attention and you catch it and hold it up, wondering why it's come to you, wondering what the meaning is, and why right now? What's the connection? This time, it was that phrase from Mary's burst of obedient jubilation, the Magnificat, about God scattering the proud "in the imagination of their hearts." Okay, since that's what seems to have been given to me to play with, I could bat it around a bit while I watched a small squadron of dragonflies winging it.

Now, an imaginative heart sounds like a good thing, and if it's another phrase for empathy and compassion--trying to imagine, in a loving way, what another soul is feeling--then an imaginative heart is a good thing. But all too often, we use our heart-imaginations in negative ways: fancying slights, imagining bad motives in others, feeding our fears and insecurities until they grow to monster size--and then acting upon them in ways that do profound harm to others. Look at Kosovo. I gather, from an article I just read, that it's sometimes the fault of our primitive brains: there's a sort of neurological watchdog there, set to go off like an hysterical beagle at the slightest hint of a threat, programmed to respond in rage or fear, and it hijacks the rational circuits. The question is: how to manage the emotion?

What if we paid less heed to the hateful imagination of our hearts and more heed to what's really going on around us? What if we were less centred in our own fears, our own pride, our own overrated needs, our own anger and envy, and were more humbly attentive to our surroundings? Sometimes we most need to stop dead in our tracks, take a deep breath, and heave a bucket of cold water over our overheated imaginations. That person who you think looks down on you and hates you--that person may not feel that way at all. How do you know, if you rely solely on the imagination of your heart?

At the end of Job, what does God do? Giving Job a swift noogie to get his attention, God tells Job to get his nose out of his navel and look around at creation. God knows that the imagination of our hearts, unchecked, can take us deeper into the darkness. What we need most of all sometimes is a good solid reality check: getting toes into this world around us, lifting our heads and simply looking around.

It's not surprising that going for a walk did good things for my spiritual flu. It reminded me that there is a reality outside my own misery, and that the more I focus on that reality and the less I focus on my misery, the less miserable I will be. That's no excuse for skimping my own psychospiritual work. I still have "miles to go before I sleep." But I won't get on with the work if I'm stuck in resentment or dark imaginings. I have to acknowledge what ails me, but then I have to set it down and get on with the laundry. There is joy out there, if I will only condescend to look for it, instead of wrapping myself up in the self-righteousness of my suffering.

Some of our suffering is self-inflicted and some of it is other-inflicted, but most of it responds well to Queen Anne's lace and the sound of a frog making rubber-band noises in the dry grass of a quiet field. Or to spending time on a city bus, looking at people and realizing that there are God's own beloved souls behind those stranger-faces, and that we are not the centre of the known universe. Or to sweeping a floor--so simple!--and catching up with the laundry. Anything to embed ourselves more deeply in this world of God's and to remind us that there is a world out there, and it is full of strangeness and beauty--if we'll just trouble ourselves to look.