Paths for Difficult Times

 Guest Writer: Jennifer Horne

Spiritual  Practices and Paths for Difficult Times

Walking a Pandemic Path

“What we are looking for on earth and in earth and in our lives is the process that can unlock for us the mystery of meaningfulness in our daily lives. … Truly the last place it would ever occur to most of us to find the sacred would be in the commonplace of our everyday lives and all about us in nature and simple things.”—Alice O. Howell in The Dove in the Stone: Finding the Sacred in the Commonplace.

In March, during the pandemic, we listened to the endless honking of Canadian geese on the lake we live by, the sounds reminding me, in my fear and helplessness, of slowed-down ululations of grief. Sometime in April, when I could no longer stand to watch the images of COVID victims on the nightly news, I began doing tai chi in my study between 5:30 and six while my husband watched CBS.

I’d been doing tai chi a couple of times a week for the last seventeen years, after taking a class from James Martin, a kind, elegant Vietnam veteran who had learned the practice to soften the demons he’d brought home with him from war. James died fifteen years ago, and as I followed the path of the twenty-four poses, beginning, going through the sequence, returning to where I started, I felt grateful for the legacy he left, how he taught us to “take a little journey,” breathe, and let our minds rest as our bodies moved. 

In fall, as darkness closed in and the days grew short and cold, I felt the need for some kind of outdoor movement, something brief but restorative, somewhere close by. Our house is nestled in woods, and I had been wanting to make a labyrinth but didn’t have the right spot for one. Instead, I made an oval meditation path in the woods off to the side of the house, finding, raking, and marking its circumference, then placing whimsical items along the way, all related to birds: an old birdhouse, in which I placed a bright orange plastic egg, a birdcage with no bottom, a piece of driftwood shaped like a heron’s head.

My favorite part is the approximately 2-x-2-foot nest of twigs I made at one turning in the path. As I walked, these things reminded me of how we were “nesting” at home but would be able to “fly farther afield” someday, and the shape of that simple path reminded me that life happens in cycles and circles as well as linear time.

Whenever my mind got too busy with pandemic thoughts, I loved going out and walking for as long as I needed to while I looked at branches, sky, and ground, so that my inner space came to resemble the outer calm and natural changes I was observing.

Staying home to stay safe from the virus, we weren’t going anywhere, and it felt constraining. Still, on my path, even though I walked in circles, it felt like I was going somewhere—somewhere deeper, more expansive, connected to a greater being, to an out-of-timeliness beyond the current fraught moment.

On the last day of March, I went out to the path after the rain stopped. The woods are greening at time-lapse speed, and the path is sprouting life: wild iris I’d never noticed before, and also the first shoots of the poison ivy that covers the woods in summer. Soon there will be ticks and chiggers and the occasional snake as well.

It’s time to leave the path until next fall, another cycle.

As I do my evening tai chi, repeating the phrase “this day, this light, this moment, this breath,” whenever I need to re-center myself, I move toward and then away from the window to the woods.

I can’t see the path now, but I know it’s there. I imagine, in times to come, it might remind me that even when I’m stuck, I still can find ways to move forward so that in walking my own small path, something good can happen.

Jennifer Horne

Poet Laureate of Alabama

Recent books:

 Dodie Walton Horne in Root & Plant & Bloom: Poems by Dodie Walton Horne, edited by Jennifer Horne and Mary Horne.

Since this writing in 2021, Jennifer published in 2024, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield and

Letters to Little Rock about memories of her father.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

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Grace

Grace

“Like the unexpected call of a friend just when you need it most, grace arrives unannounced. A door opens. A path becomes clear. An answer presents itself. Grace is what it feels like to be touched by God.”—Bishop Steven Charleston, Facebook Page.

I stand waiting to walk out and read the Gospel as we sing the hymn before the Gospel: “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” I glance at the last verse, and there, faintly written in pencil, just before the beginning of the last line, is the word “softer.” It is in my mother’s distinctive handwriting. I had forgotten that my mother sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Yorktown, Virginia. So, this must be a directive from the choir director.

My mother has been dead for twenty-five years. We did not always understand each other, but when she died, I wanted to honor her in some way. I decided to start using her personal hymnal/prayer book in church.

Her name has worn off the front cover; the gold cross will soon disappear. The red leather cover is now coming apart, particularly the backboard of the book’s spine. I have not repaired it because, for some unknown reason, what remains of this book, just as she used it, seems to be connecting me to her.

When I saw my mother’s writing, I gasped and sent up a small prayer of thanksgiving. We had some challenging times, but I have begun to feel healing over the years since her death. This morning, in this split second, I felt reconciled with my mother and grateful for her life and support.

Healing family relationships takes time and constant prayer for family members and ourselves. Today, I realize that prayer works. Attempting to connect to an estranged family member through something that the family member treasured over time works.

Valuing what we have in common, rather than remembering our differences, brings healing in life as well as after death. For example, my mother and I shared our love of the Episcopal Church and singing in particular. Today, I felt my mother beside me.

Through this realization, I experienced one more way: God’s Grace continues to heal and care for us over time if we only put ourselves in the position to receive.

 It is Grace that is helping us through difficult times. Our only job is to look for it and see it all around us.

The name of my mother’s Episcopal church in Yorktown also helped! Grace!

Bless you for supporting the ministry of our church and conference center, Camp Mitchell, on top of Petit Jean Mountain, by buying this book in the daily series of writings for the liturgical year, A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter.

My mother never saw this book or the other two in the series, but she would have liked it. If you enjoyed this book, could you briefly write a recommendation on its page on Amazon? More thank-yous than I can say for helping support a special camp for Arkansas’s children, youth, and adults!!!

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Children at Dismissal

Church Dismissal

“ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble, like this child, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”—Matthew 18: 2-5.

One of my favorite parts of the 10:30 service at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church is at the end at the back of the church, when several young children come and help me with the dismissal. They are usually sweet girls, but there is an occasional brave boy. On rare occasions, they even walk down the aisle hand in hand with me to arrive at the back of the church.

There are so many words I would like to say to them. I want them to learn to love being part of a church community, worshiping together. I want them to know they are the future of the world and Christ’s church. I want them to see that this place is open to them for the rest of their lives.

I want them to know this is a safe place. I want them to know this is where they will find a community worshiping a loving God. I want them to know what they can learn from this worshiping community at Saint Mark’s.

This can be the gift they inherit to pass on to their children and grandchildren, as my mother and grandparents did for me. I want them to learn what Jesus said when the disciples asked him who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus pulled a child out of the crowd and said the greatest in the kingdom of heaven are people like these. 

Frederick Buechner writes about our children: “Children live with their hands open more than with their fists clenched. They are people who,…, are so relatively unburdened by preconceptions that if somebody says there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they are perfectly willing to go take a look for themselves. Children aren’t necessarily better than other people. Like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” they are just apt to be better at telling the difference between a phony and the real thing.1”  

 Therefore, I must be careful about what I say and always try to speak the truth. Of course, there is no way to tell these amazing children all this. But I can invite them to be a part of the last part of the church service and simply love them for those brief moments at the back of the church before they go home, and remind them this is a place of love.

1Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/