Pandemic rituals, or what's getting you through this tough time?

 

A couple weeks ago I asked people what rituals were helping them get through the pandemic. It was for a column in the Free Press, published Feb. 5. I got more responses than I could use in the column; find them printed below. 

Doug Koop 

I do crossword puzzles and listen to hymns. It certainly pre-exists the pandemic, but its  importance is amplified in this season. 

Crossword puzzles are a form of distraction or retreat from the cares of the moment. They plunge my concentration into fragments of knowledge, trivia, and wordplay. They tease and confound at every step, and generally succumb in the end, which is gratifying. That's one element of transcendence they offer. 

Another is as a concentrating agent. I used to do crossword puzzles in graduate class seminars because it focused the restless part of my brain while another paid attention to the classroom. Without that sideways focus, my mind would wander to distraction. Ironically, focusing on a task at one hand enhanced my apprehension of the other. 

Crossword puzzles offer a ready retreat from daily stresses, generally for mere minutes at a time. The pastime calms my spirit, focusing my intellect on an abstract problem while another part of my mind floats, my emotions settle, and I gain better perspective on the agitations of the day. Escape? Perhaps. Uplifting? Often. 

As for hymns, much more could be said. I was subjected to a lot of hymn singing in my childhood and it was probably my most enjoyable experience of religion. 

I'm amazed by how many lyrics are stuck in my head, and how songs neither heard nor thought of for decades will pop into my mind at opportune moments. They arise unbidden and often have direct relevance to a situation at work or home. Last week it was "Blessed Quietness." On other occasions it's been "Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me," or "He Giveth More Grace," or .... 

For the past few months, Sunday morning "church" for Margie and me is to listen to about 30 minutes of music. Steve Bell's work has stimulated genuine worship on our part. And hymns. In this season, music from the Christian tradition has been resonating more deeply than Scripture. 

Janet Epp Buckingham  

My husband is part of a reading group reading the Bible in a year. They have an online discussion group. We are also doing the Renovare book club together. The book club reads 4 spiritual books over the year and has podcasts and a discussion forum.  

Richard A. Kauffman  

Hiking on trails. Listening to music on YouTube. Reading a book a week. I am also trying to be more mindful of Sabbath (on Sunday). I want to grow in this regard.  

All the things I listed in response to your original question were true for me the whole way through the pandemic except for the one about Sabbath keeping and hiking. We've recently started a series on Sabbath-keeping at the church where I'm an interim member of the pastoral team. It has really been a challenge to me in the best sense of that word. I preached the first sermon in the series. I've committed myself to being more mindful (observe) the Sabbath and yes, on Sunday. 

A few years ago I startled the slightly jaded members of my baby boomer Sunday school class when I told them I enjoy going to church and I feel something missing when I don't. But I see now that there is much more to Sabbath than going to church. That's like eating the appetizer but not the rest of the courses. Keeping the Sabbath entails rest, repose, recreation, reading, ceasing from commercial activities and one's work. I'm not legalistic about this, but it's something that I want to work on. The real challenge for me is social media: should I give it up on Sundays? I'm not ready for that but may try during Lent. 

I'm coming to the conviction that if we were to take the Sabbath seriously it would lead to a renewal of the church. The Jews believed that if Jew would faithfully keep the Sabbath some week the kingdom of God would come. As Walter Brueggemann has said, “Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms.” 

Here's where the hiking comes in: I think Sabbath, since it is the 7th day pause from God's work of creation, should put us in touch with the creation. (It should also put us in touch with the mighty works of God in history too.) So I'm committed to taking Sunday afternoon walks on nature trails that I haven't been on before or not for a long time. Of course once we have biking weather again, I'll be out on my bike.  

Carolyn Wood Carkner  

I get my brain in gear with Wordle, pray and read daily scripture before I’m out of bed. 

Justin Eisinga  

When the pandemic started almost two years ago, a group of fellow spiritual friends and I started a daily centring prayer practice over Zoom. We meet every morning, read a meditation, sit in silence together for 15-20 mins, and end with some yoga stretches. The practice is still going to this day.  

Haide Wall Giesbrecht  

It was pretty close to the start of the pandemic. I have always been someone who loves to travel and explore. With those options being cut off as a result of restrictions, it meant we had to get creative. We started to explore different areas of our neighbourhood at the beginning—different parks, streets we hadn't walked down before, trails we didn't know existed. 

Over time, as the 'stay in your local area' restrictions lifted, we explored areas in surrounding communities. I find that I find my spiritual well-being and my emotional well-being improves when I'm in nature. I see God's beauty and wonder at creation through the lens of my camera. Each day has been a minimum of 4-5 kms. In warmer weather, I would often do several 10 km walks per week. 

It honestly has been a sanity-saver. I was never someone who exercised regularly. However, walking has become such a part of my life that I miss it if ever there is a day where I don't get a regular walk. It's been a way to get out and explore, to have adventures, to have time and space to listen to audiobooks (usually fun and quirky mysteries to give me a break from the heaviness of my work), or to listen to my walking playlist of upbeat music.   

It has also been a way to connect me with people. As I have posted photos on my walks, more and more friends have reached out and asked to walk with me. There is rarely a day when I don't have someone to walk with, which has also helped fill my need for connection. 

Angeline Janel Schellenberg  

I am doing centering prayer, Visio Divina, the Examen. These practices are part of my training as a spiritual director. Would I have started these practices without the training? Would I have thought of taking the training without the pandemic? I think so, but the pandemic did play into it. By removing the expectations of church involvement, the pandemic gave me time to reflect on how I connect with God.   

At the beginning of the pandemic, I started setting my timer for 5 p.m. on weekdays to join st. benedict's table's evening prayers on Facebook Live. I joined a book study group with st. ben's. In November I started attending online Sunday evening services at st. ben's too. I've been seeing a spiritual director for years. I researched different schools and decided on Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction, started by the Vineyard in the U.S. One Sunday they do Lectio Divina, another someone shares a testimony, another they do a group Examen, another a homily, and one Sunday/month they take a Sabbath from meeting. 

Visio Divina is typically a meditation on a piece of visual art. The way our spiritual director class is doing the practice this module, we draw an image that represents a strong emotion we've experienced that day. For example, I painted a grey vase full of blue-grey emptiness with arcs of pink and yellow on the edge of the page representing the warmth and joy of others that couldn't reach me. 

As I asked God about the image, I realized that the vase was open on top, ready to receive, and even if I couldn't feel God's love coming down to me, my emptiness could reach him and my grey-blue could blend with his life, which I added as a green arc above me. Then I extended the vase downward because I felt it needed a foundation, and I noticed that it was "dipping its toes" into the pink warmth. When we did this in our class on the weekend, each of us saw our picture transform from pain to hope. Stress has a way of sucking the words right out of us, so sometimes praying through images is what we need. 

Centring prayer unlocks the pandemic knot in my gut. If I can leave God to solve the world's problems for 20 minutes straight, this makes it easier to trust during the other 23 2/3 hours of the day! The Examen gives me a chance to savour the moments in the day that I felt close to God, beauty, nature, or other humans in the middle of this isolation.  

One of the things I love most about contemplative groups/practices is that there is so much trust that God is at work. I was growing tired of what I was feeling in sermons, committees, conversations, etc. The pressure to serve more, evangelize more, give more, believe better, live more rightly. The emphasis on keeping each other accountable. In traditions that value listening to God through spiritual direction relationships, poetry, silence, Lectio Divina, etc., such as the Anglican and Vineyard and Imago Dei communities, there is no need for us to inspire/convince each other how to live because we trust the Holy Spirit to do that. And spiritual maturity often looks like doing less, not more!   

Tim Enerst  

I do scripture & conversational prayer. Dedicated time with God is more of a delight now than a discipline. Or a need. Time in his word & presence is re-orientational. So much difficult news today—in the world, in my city, in the church. I daily need the reminder of who I am in Christ, and that I belong to God. 

From that centre of being, I am free to act from love, purpose, humility, ancient wisdom & hopefully, with a bit more poise & kindness thru the day. Also helpful spiritually, I meet with a man on the phone weekly, outside of my ministry, who serves as an accountability partner & prays with me for help with my weaknesses and faults.

Patricia Paddey  

When I was commuting downtown three days a week, there was a lot of walking involved in my morning commute. Then the pandemic hit, I shifted to working from home, and started drinking too much wine and eating too much party mix. So after a couple of months, we started walking, mostly together, once or twice a day. But sometimes apart. I actually like walking alone sometimes because I put in ear buds and listen to an audio book or podcast.

The walking helps purge stress at the end of the day, wake me up at the beginning of the day, and push away from my desk for some fresh perspective in the middle of the day. 

In terms of affecting me spiritually I would say that I firmly believe we are created body, mind and spirit—the- the whole package. So if we work to keep the body healthy, then the mind and spirit will benefit. Getting out in nature –a little walk along a wooded trail near our home—soothes my spirit and lets me notice God's handiwork in meaningful ways. The walk helps me process stuff that needs processing. 

Laura Marie Piotrowicz  

I do intentional prayer during jigsaw puzzle time, with a lighted candle. With the intensity of information and uncertainties in the world at large, I have been using puzzles as a means to filter out some of the noise. I’ve long enjoyed jigsaw puzzles, and often do them for fun while watching the Jets play or listening to the radio. 

For prayerful puzzling, I turn off my phone, light a candle, read an opening prayer, and read a passage of scripture, usually from the daily lectionary. I then reflect on that scripture while I am doing the puzzle. So the puzzle itself is almost like a fidget device, using the part of my brain that is stimulated (and over-stimulated) by the busy-ness of the world, while allowing the more contemplative part of my brain the space (and grace) to delve deeper into prayer. After a time (I try not to set a clock) I gently come out of the meditative space with a closing prayer. 

I don’t puzzle every day, and some puzzles take much longer than I expect, but it’s one of the tools in my toolbox. And puzzles themselves are full of great analogies for spiritual journeying, of course!  

The intentionality of it is that sometimes I don’t feel like praying—part of my doctoral research looked into “dry spells” and how praying through those helps to build resilience. 

Part of it is not getting caught up in the craziness of the pandemic, where “pivot” has become a functional normal (but goes against our spiritual desire to be still with God). Add to that the need to make multiple plans for each event, in case of another fast pivot. (For example, last Christmas we were shut down on December 22, so we had a lot of changes to make in a very short time.)  

Part of it is the benefits of prayer are tangible and beneficial: I’m feeding my soul with prayer, so I am intentional about that—the same way that at meal-time I am feeding my body.   

We know that the pressures upon us during the pandemic are not sustainable in the long-term; this is why burnout (clinical, not just the common use) is increasing. Increased workload + increased stress + increased uncertainty = more busyness; prayer can often be the first thing ignored from our daily routine (like physical exercise or sleep; these healthy habitual routines suffer when we’re busier.)  

If I am not intentional about taking time to pray, I lose the connection with God. And if I am not grounded in God, my ministry suffers. So I aim to be intentional (finding whatever way works for me, and being open to new ideas) about embracing these realities (including boundaries) as a spiritual leader. 

Byron Burkholder 

I do walks on the river. "Pray as You Go" (a Jesuit, online, guided scripture meditation) over breakfast. These practices aren't new, but they seem to have taken a different kind of power in the context of the pandemic. The value of walking as a spiritual practice came home to me in 2017 when I walked the 800 kms of the Camino in Spain. 

The Jesuit practice of using imagination in meditation—placing yourself in the story—is also something I've tried to do for years. I'm far from an expert on both counts.  Both practices are "old" and yet the pandemic seems to draw me more fully into connecting what's going on spiritually with the suffering and uncertainty of these days. When the dots are connected, there's a strange joy--which keeps me coming back for more.  

Susan Warkentin  

I love knitting very simple designs and I have taken to knitting prayer shawls for people going through difficulties. I mostly knit every day in the evening and more on weekends. The knitting gives me purpose while also giving me time to think and pray for the person I am knitting the shawl for. 

Dougald Lamont  

Others have baked or taken up crafts. I've played more music. During the pandemic, I have found that I will see, hear, or read some piece of art and it will stop me in my tracks. It could be an old poem like the Second Coming by Yeats, or a painting, but suddenly there's a moment of peace and clarity and insight in the hurricane of chaos and misery we're living through. 

I have played more music because I couldn't leave the house. Mostly guitar. 

 I have been jamming with friends for over 30 years and for the first time in over a year we had a chance to get together and play. A friend had died, two of us had been in hospital, so it was bittersweet, though mostly sweet because we are glad to be alive, which is gratitude at its most basic. We were all rusty at first but eventually got going. We trade instruments, improvise, don't worry about lyrics and make up solos, and playing like that is always spiritual. It is an act of creation. You are creating something out of nothing, and when you play together, especially with harmony, you make something that is more than the sum of the parts. 

Jamming a Neil Young song, in a Winnipeg basement, has arguably been a spiritual ritual in this city for more than a generation.   

Old songs also felt completely new in startling ways, like "You can't always get what you want" which has lines like "I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse" and as I sang it I started to laugh, because as a politician who gets angry phone calls and threats, I had never sung that before. 

But in a pandemic, the line "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need," has a completely different resonance. All songs do—songs of love, and loss and sadness—even party songs. And it's only in singing the song that you experience the insight on loss and your life. So it is a healing insight, and that is very spiritual. 

Don Engle  

We always liked the outdoors. Hiked with our kids. Picked wild berries "God's garden." In the spring of 2020, I somehow injured my back and was deteriorating. I started physiotherapy and only got worse. The physiotherapist said, "You have to walk." I bought a walker and walked hallways. Then walked to physio and back—1,600 steps. My first target was 6,000 steps. We walked every day in Birds Hill and Assiniboine Forest with my walker. By August I was up to 10,000 steps a day. I ditched the walker for hiking poles. As much as possible we walk in parks and along the rivers in Winnipeg. 

I marvel at the beauty of the outdoors, the changing of seasons, the flora and fauna as life springs forth and flourishes through the seasons. Truly "God's Garden." 

I love to sit and hear the wind, rustling of leaves, birds singing. This is My Father's World. I often catch myself singing hymns to myself as I walk in these quiet places. We try not to walk along busy streets. We walked the trails along Bunn's Creek when we lived in NK. Now we live in St. Boniface beside the Cathedral. There are many places to walk.   

Many friends and relatives have been widowed. During COVID we committed to calling them. Last Saturday a friend was so thankful for my evening call. "This is the first phone call I had today," he said. I am a retired pastor still serving. I call people in the parish on my dime just out of concern for them. To help us remember them we name them in our daily morning prayer.  

Steve Plenert  

I have been journaling for five years or so. It was a very important for processing thoughts and feelings.I write about the weather, family life, physical health, how to stay focused on goodness and a bit about my work. There are always things to think about and reflect on!  

Janice Biehn  

I do morning Prayer on Zoom, twice a week. It’s a ministry of our church. I used to go in person maybe once or twice a month but now it’s on zoom and I say it twice a week with our priest, It helps give my week structure, which I find I really need working from home.  

Val Pierce  

We try to walk every day. A new pooch keeps us motivated. We pray for our children and their demanding work, all health. We pray for those who are sick in our circle of friends, we pray for our world, the divisions that are currently growing more deeply entrenched, for our leaders, people who are particularly stressed right now. 

I also journal. I’ve been doing it for years, but with Covid I have found it immensely grounding. I write my prayers to God but also write in response to others who point the way. Tim Keller has been a highlight. Journaling and walking prayers and a few other practices have created sacred spaces which are a respite and relief from the daily news cycles and mundane routines of day life. 

Rob Robotham 

During Covid I have more time to pray and I'm realizing I need God more than ever and that prayer is really important. I feel very grounded after doing this. I've always enjoyed hiking but have gotten into it even more during the pandemic. As soon as I'm in the woods on a hike, I get a sort of "nature buzz" where I feel relaxed & any stress starts to disappear. I think this is fairly common. I also enjoy the physical exercise elements as well.  

Kathie Gillis  

I knit. I do it many times a day. I weave intention into each stitch. If it’s a gift for someone each stitch has a mantra for them, like a prayer. From pandemic perspective it keeps me connected to the recipient, as well as feeling productive outside of my job. The repetitive motion keeps me in constant meditation, which also allows the freedom to keep the person in my thoughts and send blessings, intentions of healing, abundance, deservedness.  

Belle Jarniewski  

I do morning prayers online with Congregation Shaarey Zedek and of course on Shabbat. It's really become a new thing since my daughter began working at Shaarey Zedek as lay clergy. So she is doing several services a week. 

Before she began working there I also tuned in but less often. They are generally an hour long. I find it very comforting to hear the service and see the messages in the chat from people tuning in from near and far. The prayer for healing is traditionally part of the daily services and people can add to the list of names of those in need in healing through the chat. There is such a wonderful feeling of unity and support.  

Theo Robinson  

I spend time reading, researching, and trying to write. I do try to carve out time, although I'm not always successful. I have two projects on the go—an autobiography and a book about Transgender Pastoral/Spiritual care. I am mostly doing research still. I have definitely written more over the last two years than I have before.  

Because I have been reading about theology, it nourishes my spiritually by increasing my knowledge.  

Nicolas Greco  

I participate in daily online mass. It has connected me with an “imagined community” of faith, all coming together at the same time to watch the same thing. It has been (somewhat) constant in this turbulent time. In terms of spirituality, it is really access to something transcendent in a mostly mundane “frame” of the TV (in my case, a livestream). I was Protestant (I grew up Pentecostal) and entered into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2016. I knew of the Daily TV mass before a friend alerted me to it, and we watched it together for a time (messaging each other throughout).