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The Talking The Walk framework of reflective practice is vital for anyone who wants to grow in the art of discernment. Learning to listen for the threads of God along the way and alongside others is a gift for individuals, teams and the community.
Bruce takes care to journey with you, highlighting signposts and hidden treasures for you to explore and discover at a pace that is both considerate and gracious. I highly recommend Talking the Walk for any individual or team that desires to expand their capacity to listen for the voice that whispers, "This is the way, walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21) 

Sarina Sherring

Ennegram Coach, Spiritual Director

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Reflect the Original

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Talking the Walk was really helpful in giving me some simple, practical tools to wrestle through some deep challenges with the Lord. It allowed me to approach these challenges from a different perspective and engage with the Lord and others in a helpful way.
​I highly recommend it and plan to start implementing it more and more in my life. Thanks Bruce!​

Tim Fryer

Missions Worker

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Power to Change

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Bruce brings his years of experience teaching and living a lifestyle of reflective practice through Talking the Walk. I enjoyed his personal stories of application and how the journey involved regular engagement to my personal context.​

Ian Finnan

Missions Worker

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Power to Change

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These questions all concern reflective practice, which centres on the cycle of action and reflection. Something happens (action), we pause to consider its meaning and decide on a way forward (reflection), and then we re-engage (action). Parents do it. Teachers do it. Engineers do it. Kids do it. It is a natural human rhythm!

For people of faith, reflective practice (sometimes called theological reflection) takes on a particular significance in relation to God's possible presence and activity in any given situation. There are many approaches to Christian reflective practice with different features and emphases.  

WHAT IS TALKING THE WALK?

Talking the walk is one particular approach to Christian reflective practice, in the wisdom tradition. It forms individuals, communities and the world for God’s good life as we seek to make meaning of significant experiences (issues, events, circumstances) and live the implications of that meaning.

​Talking the Walk emerged from over 15 years of teaching and doctoral research in Christian reflective practice, formation and spiritual direction. It is grounded in a relational, pledged, conversational, unfolding, tacit and non-linear approach to knowing, for the flourishing of self, others and the world.

Talking the walk is for anyone curious about connecting life and faith in ways that emphasise

• Presence and encounter, not just insight and activity
• Mystery more than mastery, confidence more than certainty
• Fruitfulness from relationship, more than results from productivity
• Better questions that open up, more than simplistic answers that nail shut
• The journey with, not just the destination towards
• Circuitous depth more than linear progress

​Talking the walk has three pillars to 
​ground our reflective practice:

Formation 

Good reflective practice involves every dimension of our being. Talking the walk focuses on the three-way interdependence of spirituality, theology and ministry to engage and form the whole person, within the whole community, for the whole of creation. Since our reflective practice is always ‘on the way’, talking the walk plays the long game of formation as God continually works with our flaws and cracks.

Shalom ​

Good reflective practice has a direction, because our vision of the good life shapes our meaning-finding and so always needs recalibrating. Talking the walk is oriented towards God’s good life of shalom as the embodiment of the kingdom: the flourishing of the cosmos, communities and individuals in graces such as reconciling relationships, justice and righteousness, beauty and creativity, paschal wholeness (‘paschal’ points to the rhythm of Jesus’ death and resurrection).

Emmaus Labyrinth ​

Good reflective practice has a design that is memorable, simple and deep. Talking the walk engages the whole person by combining two rich resources that feature walking and talking. One is the Road via Emmaus story (Luke 24:13–49). The other is the labyrinth, a ritual for embodied reflection and ancient archetype for life’s winding journey. Together they generate talking the walk’s three movements.

​Talking the walk has three movements to
​guide our reflective practice:

Contemplative Conversation

Good reflective practice begins with contemplative listening for clues in the experience we bring to reflection. Talking the walk Listens In to spirituality and personhood, Listens Out to ministry in context, and Listens Up to theology and wisdom, honouring each voice with a curiosity to notice God speaking through non-linear conversation. It is particularly attentive to where shalom is present and/or resisted. 

Imaginative Discernment ​

Good reflective practice joins the dots from particular clues to notice larger discerned truths or new questions. Talking the walk encourages the imagination - the 'breaking pf the bread' - as a catalyst for this experience of discernment, pondering any images that suggest ‘it is like …’ or visions of shalom for what ‘it could be like …’ Discerned truths are named with fallible confidence: we think we’re right, and we know we could be wrong.

Courageous Embodiment ​

Good reflective practice lives new realities of any discerned truths. Talking the walk names ways shalom might be embodied in the fruit of our doing and in the roots of our deepening. The road to embodying discerned truths has twists and turns, so we ponder how God’s encouragement (or courage-giving) might be received and appropriated for the journey ahead with others along the shalom road.

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