As we've been waiting for David's coronary by-pass surgery to take place (Surgery date is Feb. 20th), I've taken up the discipline of walking again. One of those things I did consistently for a year, and then stopped. I kept saying I should start again. Never did. But last week I pushed myself out the door once more. Why? I felt mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically sluggish. And from previous experience I knew that walking would begin to bring healing to all those aspects of my mind/body/spirit.

There is a park down the street from my father-in-law's house. That was my destination. I began by walking the perimeter of the park. I did not think about anything. I focused on breathing. My goal was to be gone for 30 minutes. I accomplished this goal. In fact, it took about three days of mindless walking before I began to notice my surroundings. It took that long to walk through the first layers of "slug."

What did I notice first? My tennis shoes making a faint crunching sound on the short grass dazzled by early morning dew. Birds calling from trees. Workmen hammering on the new house being built. Kids laughing in the school playground one block away. A siren in the distance rushing to an emergency. A car door slamming. The swish of air as a bicyclist went by me. A dog joyfully barking. I was immersed in sensations of sound. God reached out and touched me with the soothing presence of ordinary, everyday sounds. I was reconnecting to the exquisite, marvelous world around me.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, on "Inner Dance," a cassette of healing music and sound, shares the following information:

An interesting thing happens when recordings of people speaking are sped up and slowed down. If these recordings are doubled in speed three times (raising the pitch by three octaves), human speech sounds remarkably like birds chirping. When raised in speed by eight octaves, these recordings sound just like crickets. Slowed down from normal speed by three octaves they sound like dolphins and slowed down at eight octaves, like the ebb and flow of the ocean.

It's interesting that recordings from the human voice should sound like nature sounds. What happens if we take cricket sounds and slow them down? They sound like birds chirping. Bird sounds slowed down sound like dolphins, and dolphin sounds slowed down sound like people speaking!

Things get more amazing! In 1989 and aerospace engineer shared sound recordings from the Voyager spacecraft. These recordings were taken as Voyager passed by the outer planets of our Solar System—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These were recordings of charged electromagnetic particles (ions) in the magnetic fields of these planets vibrating within the range of human hearing. What did they sound like? Dolphins, choirs of voices singing, crickets, birds, Tibetan bowls, and ocean sounds (plus other sounds too strange to identify but which seemed very familiar).

Have you ever considered being connected, unified, to God's creation through sound? Perhaps that's why a walk through the woods, or along the ocean, or out in the desert is so restorative to our entire being. The sounds we hear resonate with our own human speech. God's created world -- from crickets to humans to far away planets -- harmonize the voice of God in various pitches. It astounds and humbles me.

Have you ever wondered what God sounds like? I encourage you to go take a walk, and listen. It can become a deeply spiritual experience.

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praises! (Psalm 98:4)