-- Guest Contribution --

My church backs into a many-pathed woods. In summer you can walk the trails and never notice the large brick building on the ridge. But the reverse is also true. The entrance to the woods trail is tucked between church and rectory. Unless you know to look for it, you will sit in your pew unaware of the riches outside.  

For years I walked through this forest, parking half a mile away. At some point I discovered that I could reach the same trails by hiking down from the church parking lot. I could attend a service, exit through a side door, and within minutes be under towering oaks, making my way through what I came to think of as a second sanctuary.

There are times when I do my best praying outside of church. I’m less distracted, more at one with the surroundings. The rhythm of footfall puts my mind at ease, frees me to notice seasonal changes: the first snow drops of February, violets and bluebells in April, fiddlehead ferns in May. I nod and smile at fellow walkers, unwilling to break the spell, at one with nature.

Sometimes I walk the trails before a service. If I time it right, I finish the stroll just as church bells are ringing. I know I’m preparing to pray, not actually praying, but it’s hard to convince myself of that. The sauntering feels just as holy. 

When I was in high school, I played string bass in a youth orchestra that held its summer retreat at Cathedral Domain, an Episcopal camp bordering the vast Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. We sang the doxology before meals there, breaking into impromptu harmony, and on our final day, we walked down a shady path to a cathedral in the woods. Evergreens supplied both walls and windows, and light slanted through them as if through the finest stained glass. There was a rough-hewn wooden cross in the clearing.

I think of that place often when I’m walking in the woods behind church, remembering when I learned that you could worship outdoors as well as in, remembering also those young voices raised in song: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

                     —- A walker in the suburbs, Guest Contributor