Walk to Jerusalem

By Patrick Gribben
Patrick P. Gribben is a member of the Catholic Community of St. Jude, DeWitt, and serves as a member of the Diocesan Pastoral Council and the Diocesan Coordinating Commission. He also coordinates the Share the Wealth project.

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Getting parishioners into good shape – spiritually as well as physically – was the driving force behind a very successful project put on by the health ministry team earlier this year at the Catholic Community of St. Jude in DeWitt. Its centerpiece was a virtual "Walk to Jerusalem" from the mid-Michigan parish – some 6,680 miles one-way. When their communal journey was over and their pedometers put away, about 350 parishioners had walked, jogged, golfed and otherwise exercised themselves the equivalent of nearly 27,500 miles. En route they had quite a spiritual workout as well.

Background: Prime mover behind the project was parish nurse, Terry Humenik, who had read in a parish nurses’ association newsletter about how a Hawaiian parish virtually walked all the way to Jerusalem and back last year. When Terry sought out the details from her counterpart in the Hawaiian parish, she was surprised to learn that the program’s originator was St. John Health System just down the road in Warren, Michigan.

"The people at St. John were very helpful," says Terry. "They’ve written a ‘How To’ manual that has just about everything one needs to organize the project. Once our Health Ministry got the manual, we were off to the races! It’s a 12-week program designed to improve the individual’s spiritual and physical well-being and it was just what we were looking for."

(Note: The health ministry at St. Jude chose Jerusalem for their destination. As the people at St. John Health System fashioned it, the program is very adaptable. It can easily be transformed into "The Walk to Bethlehem," and it can be timed to end at Christmas.)

According to Terry, it’s a 12-week program because experience shows it takes about that long for new habits to become ingrained. "We wanted to establish a pattern of prayer and reflection, and a pattern of physical exercise that would become habitual with the participants once the walk was completed. By integrating the programs of exercise and prayer, we wanted them to bring about a total life improvement."

All forms of physical activity may be included within the program, but walking is the most popular. To fit within their concept of a "virtual" trip, about 20 minutes of aerobic activity is equated to about one mile of walking. Thus, those who like golf, jogging, basketball or any other physical activity can contribute miles to the journey.

Walking opportunities abound and the ministry tried to make use of them all. It promoted walking in the Lansing area shopping malls and publicized the availability of two DeWitt schools for walkers. Program start-up materials included maps of the various courses and their mileage. The ministry measured St. Jude’s two parking lots and included them among the options. Five laps around the south parking lot are worth one mile as are 7.5 laps around the north lot. The parish community center is a dizzying 21.5 laps to the mile. Father Dwight Ezop, pastor, encouraged use of the body of the church itself (16 laps) when it wasn’t in use. "What better place to walk and pray?" he told the walkers.

"We also involved the physically challenged," notes Terry. "Not everyone can walk in a Michigan winter, but, if you want to be part of the effort, fine. There are chair aerobics. If you can’t do physical exercise, you can do the praying and other spiritual exercises. You can even pray for those who are walking!"

Each week, the travelers received handouts which included timely lectionary readings. There were questions and other thought provokers for them to reflect upon. "Although walking and talking seem to go hand-in-hand, the spiritual side doesn’t need to be done during the physical exercise," Terry advises. "Indeed, some of the exercises don’t lend themselves to it. Can you imagine trying to reflect while playing basketball? Our advice was to take care of the spiritual side wherever it fits comfortably into your life. That way, it makes it more likely they’ll keep it up after the ‘walk’ has been completed."

The members of St. Jude Health Ministry started working on the program in October and introduced it on January 22nd. The "How To" manual encourages individualization of the program and the ministry did just that. Its members visited the "Y," local commercial gyms, fitness salons and other appropriate establishments and solicited prizes for drawings to be held at three-week intervals for the travelers.

"Naturally, since we were emphasizing health and spirituality, we tried to follow through with suitable prizes. We awarded free sessions at the salons and gyms, water bottles, and prizes from the Rosary Book & Gift Shoppe and from the book store at St. Francis Retreat House," says Terry, "but no Big MACs… this was a healthy life-style project!" Each weekend, the hikers signed-in, recording their miles from the past week. Everyone who contributed to that week’s total was given a ticket for the next prize drawing.

The ministry ordered and sold 50 T-shirts imprinted with a special logo. The son of one ministry member is a graphic arts student and he developed the project’s logo for the T-shirt. It was very much in tune with the all-inclusive nature of the program. It featured a group made up of children, a young family, senior citizens and a wheelchair-bound person approaching St. Mary Magdalen Church in Jerusalem. The logo found other uses as Father Dwight fashioned the Lenten theme at St. Jude around "The Walk To Jerusalem, A Lenten Journey With Jesus."

To avoid long sign-in lines before and after weekend liturgies, each walker was assigned a page in one of several log books kept in the gathering space. For Terry, it was a simple task of totaling the miles on each page and then aggregating those to see how far the group of "pilgrims" had traveled that week.

"We had a large map of the trip and we showed the progress weekly along our route from DeWitt to Jerusalem," Terry adds. "Father Dwight noted the progress each Sunday from the altar and we had regular reports in the Sunday bulletin.

"In the beginning, some folks didn’t realize we were aggregating the mileage of all participants to accomplish the journey," recalls Terry. "They didn’t see how they could make the nearly 6,700 miles to get there individually. That gave us the chance to remind them that we improve our individual prospects of getting to Heaven when we act together as a community."

In addition to the handouts on the spiritual reflections, each weekend the people were given a handout prepared by ministry members on one of the 12 countries included in the route. The handouts described the natives, their country, their culture and some of the challenges they faced in their daily lives. The walkers were prompted to remember the natives in their prayers that week.

As valuable as it is, the St. John manual doesn’t anticipate every wrinkle. It’s silent on the subject of pets. Some of the travelers got their exercise walking their pets. Could their miles be included? Terry, whose "day job" is that of an IV Nurse at Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital, puzzled on that one for a bit. "We ended up having a separate register for pets’ miles but kept them apart from the humans’ total. Naturally, we didn’t have to worry about getting them the prayers and scripture reflections either. In all, the pets logged 932.85 miles. Next time around, they’ll probably want to have them included in the logo!"

At the outset, the ministry members had no idea of how many folks would enroll for the trip. They planned for 100 and more than 350 people actually signed-up. That first week the ministry was busy getting the added handouts needed for the large turnout. As the program progressed, there were even phoned-in miles from "snow birds" who wanted their mileage included in the weekly totals while they were away. By the time the project was over, the group had compiled 27,489.51 miles – enough for two round trips with some 700 miles left over.

"When we gave the final report in the bulletin, we had a little fun with the extra miles. We used some of them to make a quick stop in Hell, MI, and then go on to Paradise, MI, before finally returning to DeWitt," Terry points out. "We had many of those who walked tell us that this project was just what they needed to get them to strengthen their bodies by the exercise and to strengthen their faith with the prayers and meditations. We certainly hope they are continuing these good habits on their own."

Resources Required: Beyond the paper costs for the handouts and the mileage logs, there are only a few other relatively modest costs: the map was inexpensive and prizes were all donated. Information sources included the lectionary and the internet. The T-shirts were sold at cost and were self-liquidating. There is a fee of $35.00 for the "How To" manual which was written by Nancy Evans, R.N., who is herself a parish nurse. It can be ordered from:

St. John Health System
Dept. of Community Health
2800 Dequindre
Warren, MI 48902

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Person To Contact: Terry Humenik, R.N.
Parish Nurse
Catholic Community of St. Jude
PO Box 280
DeWitt, MI 48820
Phone: 517-669-8335
Email: stjudesm@yahoo.com
Fax: 517-669-8343