Praying in Color

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Archives for August 2011

Algebra Prayer

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A friend asked me to pray for her granddaughter who needs to pass a math test in order to place out of a college algebra class. So I prayed for her. Since Azalea’s issue is algebra, symbols from math courses seemed appropriate doodles for her.

For the art-anxious, this should be clear evidence that praying in color requires no artistic skill. Repetitious drawing of the symbols creates a way for me to stay focused on my prayer for Azalea without getting hung up about the picture. The infinity symbols on the outer circuit are a mathematical way to indicate the endless and inestimable love and power of God.

Verbal Desert

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I’ve been in a verbal desert this summer. Besides a few blog posts, my writing has been scant.

I’ve seen some exceptional beauty during the past few months. In particular, the amazing sky from the east to the west coasts awes me. I want to write eloquent descriptions of it and hold these scenes in my memory forever. But words are inadequate to describe what my eyes see. My parched summer vocabulary cannot capture these fleeting moments of beauty.

In the story of the Transfiguration In Luke’s Gospel, the disciples try to capture a moment of kingdom beauty:

I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters–one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.) (Luke 9: 27-33 NIV)

Peter’s offer to build three shelters for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus seems like an attempt to stop time, to hold this ephemeral moment of beauty forever. Unlike me, Peter doesn’t reach for his notepad and fumble for words to describe his experience on paper. He wants to get out his Tinkertoys and make it 3-D.

I’ve surrendered myself to a visual, rather than verbal summer. I’m looking with my eyes and trying to remember. A digital camera helps. Although the camera cannot capture the smells, the sounds, or the temperature, it’s my attempt to stop time and immortalize a moment. If cameras had been around 2000 years ago, I bet Peter would have been the first of the disciples to fumble for his and start snapping pictures.

Photos by Sybil MacBeth: Skies from Michigan, Maryland, and New Mexico

Praying in Color Ideas

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Susan from Indiana wrote to me with some creative Praying in Color ideas and gave me permission to share them. Here are Susan’s ideas. Thank you!

1. As I read scripture, I either search online for a passage that is of a specific topic, or I just start reading until something goes “aha!”  I copy and paste scripture, choose a suitable font/color and print it out.  I then cut it out and paste it to my PIC page.  I pray that scripture and as the spirit brings thoughts to my mind, I start doodling.  I usually start with a specific need or person, but many times it is more of a worship/learning exercise.  I’ve noticed two things:  I am memorizing more scripture and I”m digging deeper into translations and word studies.

Also I’ve always loved geometric designs and they appear often in my prayers.  I’ve started using some tools that really work for me–a t-square, a triangle and a nifty little template.

This is an idea my husband Andy and I mention in our upcoming book Praying in Black & White: A Hands-On Practice for Men (or anyone who is afraid of color and artsy stuff). The new book comes out in the late fall.

Here is Susan’s cool geometric drawing/prayer and her tools:


2. I take a lot of photos and I’d thought about using some with my prayer pages. I selected several of the people I pray for regularly and printed out a contact sheet.  These are about the size of postage stamps.  I then cut them out and the first one I experimented with was for my sister who had knee surgery. I had taken a picture of her leg and then I searched my folders for a picture of her and one of her and her husband.

Here is Susan’s picture prayer. Combining a picture with doodling is a great way to pray with children, especially when the children are too young to write names or words on their own.


Innovations

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My granddaughter Clara is one year old. At her birthday celebration last weekend, she pulled out a brand new party trick and walked fourteen steps. She is so excited by her new skill, she hasn’t slept well since. This vertical innovation of mobility has brought both sleeplessness and clinginess. Her foot-high view of the world as a crawler has grown to at least knee-high. She vacillates from her new-found independence back to the safety of babyhood–and not without tears. Her life has been disrupted.

In his book What The Dog Saw and Other Adventures*, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the inventor and pitchman Ron Popeil. When Ron introduced the Chop-O-Matic and the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ on television, “…it required consumers to rethink the way they went about their business in the kitchen. Like most great innovations, it was disruptive. And how do you persuade people to disrupt their lives?”

The phrase “Innovations are disruptive” has been gnawing at me for several weeks. Like learning a new word, I see it everywhere: Walking for Clara is disruptive. Changing the way we worship in church or do ministry with newcomers is disruptive. Moving or changing jobs is disruptive. Marriage is disruptive. Children are disruptive. Everything worth having disrupts my life.

Jesus, too, is disruptive. Jesus asks me to change the way I relate to my enemies, spend my money, live in community…. He persuades me to disrupt my life not with promises of  ease or innovative kitchen gadgets; he persuades me to disrupt my life with  promises of a new relationship with God and my neighbor–a love and a “peace that surpass all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7)

*What The Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, 2009, p. 15.