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Archives for October 2016

Count Your Blessings in Color–a Thanksgiving (and every day) Gratitude Coloring Book

October 26, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth Leave a Comment

If you are looking for a Thanksgiving gift for friends, family members, or Thanksgiving Day hosts, consider Paraclete Press’s new coloring book called Count Your Blessings in Color. The book is designed specifically for praying your gratitudes and thanksgivings. I wrote the introduction to the book with suggestions for how to use the coloring pages, but the designs were created and drawn by a group of artists from Paraclete. The book includes 28 designs on the right-hand pages and 28 quotations about gratitude on the left-hand pages. The quotations’ sources range from ancient to contemporary–Cicero, the Bible, Teresa of Avila, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Albert Einstein, Maya Angelou, Brian McLaren, Shauna Niequist….

The coloring pages are visually inviting and interesting without being too complicated or intimidating. There is space for words in and around the designs and room to add additional marks or doodles if desired.

As an after dinner activity on Thanksgiving Day, hand out colored markers or pencils, pass around Count Your Blessings in Color, and invite each person to choose a coloring page. Together you can pray and play your gratitudes.

Below is the cover and three examples of the coloring pages. You can order the book from Paraclete, amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the other usual suspects.

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: coloring book, Count Your Blessings in Color, Paraclete Press, prayer and doodling

Pilgrimage Prayers

October 17, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth 2 Comments Leave a Comment

When I returned last week from 30 days of pilgrimage and vacation in Europe, I realized something. While I was there I had prayed multiple prayers of thanksgiving for the beauty of the world, the fabulous food, the wonderful companionship, and the careful planning of many people. My prayers were also full of adoration and awe for the God who puts whimsy and wildness into creation. I even muttered a few prayers of confession for my occasional grouchiness and judgmental spirit. But almost completely absent were prayers of intercession–words and petitions offered on behalf of other people. My first response to this realization was guilt. How could I be so selfish? People still needed my prayers even if I was far away. I had packed colored pencils and paper in my backpack so I could doodle and pray for people back home. But that didn’t happen. Then I realized something else. God can manage the world just fine without my assistance. My family and friends are always in God’s care, whether or not I am worrying about them, praying for them, or even not thinking about them. My prayers for their health, safety, and well-being are more a reminder to me of God’s omnipresence than a way of nudging God into action.

Much of my doodling on this trip was about trying to recreate and remember some of the magnificent things I saw around me. Although I took lots of photos, my hands wanted to capture on paper what my eyes saw in the world. When I managed to let go of the art critic inside my head, I enjoyed playful attempts at reproducing the essence of the Irish countryside in shape and color–even if my sheep looked a little like ants. I don’t know if these drawings are prayers but I think most of the time when I put pen and color to paper I am trying to find a kinesthetic, visual way to transcribe the awe I experience.

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One Sunday, my husband and I attended the Communion Service at the Anglican Cathedral in Galway called St. Nicholas. The beautiful stained-glass windows caught my attention. Instead of being a distraction from the liturgy, the windows gathered me into an experience of worship. They made me want to draw, so I did. Although the result below looks little like the actual window except in shape, the drawing recalls for me the gratitude and joy I felt as I worshipped in that space.

The minister preached on Luke 16:
19 “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.
20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Laz’arus, full of sores,
21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried;  (NRSV)

I drew while the preacher spoke. Drawing helps me to pay attention while listening, just as it does for me in prayer. The strokes and words also remind me later of  the key ideas I have heard in the sermon.

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My four weeks away turned out to be an unintentional intercessory prayer sabbatical. Like most everything else on this pilgrimage, the prayers that did rise up in me were unexpected and surprising gifts.

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: intercession, Ireland, Luke 16: 19-22, pilgrimage, prayer, Praying in Color

A Thin Place

October 5, 2016 by Sybil Macbeth 7 Comments Leave a Comment

Ireland is often described as a “thin place,” one of those physical but mystical locations on the planet where God and the Divine seem particularly close or accessible. The mind clears, the heart opens, and epiphanies occur unbidden in these places. Whether this is the nature of the place itself or the result of hundreds of years of prayers and expressions of awe uttered in these places is unclear. The boundaries between spirit and flesh, between heaven and earth seem to vanish.

I was in Ireland for 18 days. This water-wrapped country is so beautiful, so lush, and so green. I “Ooh”ed and “Aah”ed with the same frequency as I did when I lived in Colorado in 2015 and my daily prayer was “Wow!” Although no particular holy spot in Ireland knocked me upside the head or was a thin place for me, I felt thin here. (And not in physique.) By thin, I mean that the inside of me felt close to the outside of me–that I was like a piece of sheer fabric, maybe even porous.

I am not a cryer. I cry about twice a year, usually inappropriately watching a movie about dogs or reading a children’s book. But in Ireland I cried daily. At Glendalough, the 6th century woodsy monastic home of St. Kevin, a clump of soft, spring green moss brought me to tears. On the winding narrow road to the west coast, the rock-enclosed fields of sheep wading through knee high grass set me off. The rocky cliffs of the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of the Dingle Peninsula overwhelmed me. The tiny churches and stone cells of saints who spent years in solitude and prayer brought tears. An experienced guide at St. Sourney’s Well in the Burren talked about the relationship between people and their landscape and I started to cry. And though I am uncertain whether these are tears of sorrow, joy, or astonishment they were cleansing, maybe even baptismal–as if they had been waiting for a way out for a long time.

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: Glendalough, Ireland, the Burren, thin places

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