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Archives for April 2016

A Gold Plastic Crucifix

April 28, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth 1 Comment Leave a Comment

I grew up in the 1950’s in an almost-middle-class neighborhood of two-story asphalt-shingled cottages and bungalows. Many families on the street had at least five kids. My strongly Protestant family only had two kids—just my older brother and me. My parents slept in twin beds; all of the Catholic parents slept in double beds.

No one on the street had money to spare, or if they did, they spent it on things not visible in the driveway or on the front porch. Many of the families, however, did fork out the $8 plus “carfare” for a once-a-week maid. Our maid was named Fanny. She came on the streetcar from downtown Baltimore to the suburbs every Friday. She always wore a waist-down apron, smelled like the cheesy chips she kept in her pockets, and hummed all day long while she worked.

When I was thirteen or fourteen, my birthday fell on Fanny’s workday. I don’t know how she knew it was my birthday, but I do remember I was standing next to the family-room credenza when she reached into her apron pocket and handed me her gold plastic crucifix. “Happy Birthday,” she said. I remember I was surprised–both by her kindness and by the gift itself. The crucifix seemed important to Fanny, but the only thing I knew about crucifixes was that they were something Catholics had and Protestants avoided. My Catholic best friend and next-door neighbor had them in her house. Her parents had a bloody one over their double bed and Marian had one hanging from the bottom of her glow-in-the-dark rosary.

My parents thought crucifixes were wrong, maybe even idols. But when Fanny gave me my first crucifix, it did not feel wrong. Later in the day I showed my mother Fanny’s birthday gift to me. She confiscated it, saying something like, “You don’t need this.” Her intent was not cruelty, but a fear of most things Catholic.

Gold Crucifix

My relationship today with crucifixes is different than it was decades ago. I used to think holy religious practice was all about the correct thoughts, words, and beliefs in my head. But when words and theology failed me in my own prayers over a dozen years ago, I’m pretty certain God sat me in a chair, gave me colored markers and paper, and said, “Pray with your hands, your eyes, your heart, and your little child self. Get out of your head.”

Crucifixes, rosaries, prayer beads, candles–all of those religious objects I labeled as superstitious and idolatrous as a child and young adult—are centuries old practices to engage our whole bodies, senses, and minds in prayer. They involve touch and sight. When rosaries first came on the scene about eight or nine hundred years ago most people were illiterate. The faith was shared through oral stories and visual images. As someone who spends 90% of her time tossing words and ideas around in her brain, crosses, crucifixes, prayer beads, and colored markers enhance my appreciation of God’s Word and Story by providing a visual and tactile focus. When I look at them, I do not worship them. Scattered around my house they are flashing beacons in the midst of my chaotic and fretful thoughts to refocus my attention on God.

Crucifix collage

In retrospect, I wish I had protested when my mother took the crucifix many years ago. Fanny had given me something dear to her and it was dismissed. When my mother died and my father moved away from the house, I remembered the crucifix and searched in every drawer and behind every door of the credenza. But I never found it.

As a reflection of my changing theology and practice and maybe a little bit in honor of Fanny, I have several crucifixes in my house. One of them is at the end of a glow-in-the-dark rosary hanging on the lampshade next to my bed. It is the last thing I see before I go to bed. The glowing crucifix and Psalm 139:12 remind me that both the night and the day belong to God: “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (NRSV)

And I am still keeping an eye out for a gold plastic crucifix to keep in my pocket.

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: crucifix, Praying in Color, rosary, Visual Prayer

Pray and Color: A Coloring Book and Guide to Prayer

April 21, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth 1 Comment Leave a Comment

“I am not an artist.” This has been my mantra for decades. But I do love to doodle and to add color to my doodles. A dozen years ago I combined my doodling with a desperate need to pray for my friends and started to “pray in color” by accident. My accidental way to pray became my regular, intentional way to pray and I wrote the book Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God (2007).

I figured if even I could doodle, anyone could. After leading more than 150 workshops and retreats, I have met people who are uncomfortable even doodling. But many of them like to color. So I drew some coloring pages with ideas about how to pray using the pages and posted them on this blog. They are in the Handouts section. In the past six months I drew 32 coloring pages/templates with about 30 pages of prayer instructions and the result is a “praying in color” coloring book called Pray and Color: A Coloring Book and Guide to Prayer. It will be available mid-May for purchase but can be pre-ordered on the amazon or Paraclete Press websites.

Here is the cover. I’ll post some examples of the templates in the next few weeks. Please Share this post with others. Thanks.

Note: I noticed there is another coloring book also called Pray and Color, so check the author before ordering. :)

Pray and Color Front Cover

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: Coloring Books, Prayer and Coloring, prayer and doodling, Praying in Color

Heart and Stripes Coloring Page

April 18, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth Leave a Comment

Below is a blank coloring page to use as a template for prayer and an example of a colored, finished version. I used the page for a birthday prayer for a friend. I wrote the words of a prayer from the Compline Service in the Book of Common Prayer on page 134.  Although intended as a nighttime prayer, it is one I say off and on all day long. I thought it was a good blessing for a birthday. “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”

To use this page as a template for prayer you can choose to pray for other people, pray your gratitude list, list your character defects, write words of adoration for God, make a forgiveness list, pray your own set of petitions…. Fill the spaces with color or write words or names in them. Let every stroke of color be an intentional stroke of nonverbal prayer. As a chronic doodler, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to add more lines, dots, and marks.

Click on the .jpg or .pdf version of the prayer to download the page. Make sure to download it first with the downward facing arrow and then print it. Feel free to make copies and share it.

.jpg    or    .pdf

Hearts and Stripes Collage (1)

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: coloring pages, Compline, Guide us waking O Lord, Pray and Color, prayer and doodling, Praying in Color

Back to the Basics of Praying in Color

April 7, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth 2 Comments Leave a Comment

Praying in Color started for me as a way to pray for others. Then it morphed into a way to give thanks, confess, complain, be with scripture, spend time with God…. These variations have all been helpful to me. But the most instinctual reason I pray is a gut cry for help with my own life and the lives of others. “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee.”–Psalm 102:1 KJV

So here is one of those gut prayers to God for help, when my “cry” cannot even find the right words to say. First I drew a northwest to southeast curvy line and added two doodles with the name of God in them. Starting with God reminds me where to put my focus. Then I drew a doodle for each person. This is not intended as an art project. It is a collection of shapes, lines, dots, marks, and color to give my hand and eye something to do while I spend time with a person and offer them into God’s care. If words come to me, I pray them. In this prayer, I wrote them on the curvy line.

The visual prayer stays with me. Every time I look at the finished result, it reminds me to pray again.

Basic Prayer

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: prayer intercessory prayer, Praying in Color

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