I am faint of heart in January, as so many of us are. The country is crippled by cold and inertia arrives after the frantic speed of December.

I sit in my favorite chair grabbing hold of the truth and clinging to it for dear life. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Yes, the Jesus prayer holds water on so many different levels.

If you try to argue against it, you are doomed, for it is the way back into the sacred heart from which all of life arises.

I have a tattered copy of a book I found in Arizona many years ago. In it, the unknown author says that “All prayers that seemingly go out into the universe are really answered within one’s own heart.”

This discovery is made again and again by me, the perpetually anxious one. I sit there with no inclination to move, feeling jittery and unsafe. I murmur the prayer and feel its power.

My own heart knows itself and my mind forgets.

How can I ever hope to transcend the forgetful mind?

Only by the route of this prayer said in a state of anxiety and a real sense of doom.

I know I am doomed; we all are. The mind is too delicate a thing to last more than a lifetime. It begins to betray us at middle age.

However, and I cling to this, I am known only by my heart. The mind and I have never met. That is a very good thing.

Vicki Woodyard