Mindfulness: a search through the Bible

Mindfulness is awareness.
"A good place to start cultivating mindfulness is in the body." Jon Kabat-Zinn
We will start with some physical practices and exercises: breathing, listening, walking, and other aspects of daily life.

While we have talked about Buddhist tradition and here in the U.S. we often think of Buddhism when we think of meditation, I offer the following reflection and selections from the Bible on breath and breathing, listening and walking and mindfulness. We start with breath because that's where God started in Genesis 2:7 "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."
Job 33:4, The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Listening is used often in the Bible especially by the prophets, to call people to attention to what is going on in the world: Isaiah 18:3, All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth, when a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, listen! Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. Matthew 11:15 Let anyone with ears listen! Acts 28: 26-27 'Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.' Our exercises in listening address the kinds of issues that these scriptures describe.

Walking also starts early on with God: Genesis 3:8, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
The central tenet and prayer of Judaism regards walking as essential: Deuteronomy 10:12, So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.
Walking indeed is part of the Christian faith: 2 Corinthians 5:5-7 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight.

In fact, mindfulness starts with God's work of creation as described by the Psalmist: Psalm 8:3-4 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
God is mindful of us, and we are created in the image of God, so that we too may be mindful of all of creation, ourselves included.