Praying in Color

Mobile Nav Menu

2019 Advent Calendars

by Leave a Comment

My early-childhood, next-door neighbor always had an Advent calendar. In our Christian Science household we did not celebrate Advent, but I coveted all those little doors my friend Marian opened every day in the weeks before Christmas. Each door revealed tiny, colorful scenes of sheep, shepherds, stars, and angels. The pictures summarized the stories I knew from The Bible and from Christmas carols. I think an occasional Santa Claus and reindeer popped out of doors, too.

Advent is now my favorite season of the Church year and using an Advent calendar is my favorite way to pay attention to the four weeks before Christmas. The calendars I use, however, are different from the store-bought versions. Mine have no doors, just a calendar template with blank spaces for the days of Advent. Each day I fill one of the little spaces with my prayers–not just verbal prayers but visual ones. The calendar grows day by day with doodles, drawings, and words–whatever feels right. After four weeks the page is a patchwork quilt of my small, daily efforts to be present with God. This practice feels prayerful and playful.

I posted the first Advent templates in 2009. I still love using the calendars because they engage my mind and my body in the Advent experience. The daily practice of drawing on the calendar gives me a creative and simple way to immerse myself in the story of God’s Incarnation and to watch and wait for the celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25. The accumulation of my daily doodlings is a colorful tapestry and a record of my spiritual journey for the weeks leading up to Christmas. Below are samples from past years, a list of ways to use this year’s calendar templates, and eight possible templates.

Finished Calendars from Previous Years

Creating an Advent calendar is not supposed to produce a great work of art. Enjoy the process. Drawing skills are not a requirement! Advent calendars can also be just black and white.

Calendars by Cindy O
Candles by Connie Denninger

The free, downloadable calendar templates below provide spaces for your daily prayers, words, and doodles. Since Advent starts on December 1st this year, each calendar has twenty-four empty spaces. These Advent calendars are for both adults and children.

Ways to Use the Calendar Templates

1) In a space or shape on the calendar, write the name of someone for whom you are praying. Doodle around the name, add color. Think of each stroke of color or each doodled mark (line, dot, arc, spiral…) as a wordless prayer. If words come to you as you draw and color, pray them. Squeeze them onto the calendar in the shape or along the margins if they feel important. When you have finished with your daily entry, say “Amen” or recite a short passage of Scripture appropriate to Advent like “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” (Psalm 27:1) This tiny colorful mosaic creates a frame around the person’s name. Every time I look at the calendar, the names and designs are a visual reminder to pray for each person again.

2) Combine your calendar with one of the many wonderful Advent books of meditations and reflections. Read the entry for the day. Choose a word from the reading that jumps out at you. Write it in the shape and start to doodle and color around it. Marinate in the word. What is the word saying to you? What does God have to say to you about the word?
Listening + doodling+ coloring = praying.  Keep a computer or notebook next to your calendar so you can write any insights or “ahas.”

3) Write and ponder an Advent word: prepare, wait, pregnant, hope, watch, darkness, wilderness, longing, light… as you doodle and color.

#AdventWord, a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary, offers a new word each day and the chance to see how others throughout the world have reflected on the word. 

4) Advent is a season of hope. Write something you hope for each day. Offer that idea to God as you draw, write, and color.

5) Celebrate the Women and Men of the Bible. Choose a different person for each day and learn what they did and why they are important to our story and God’s story. As you draw, be quiet and listen to what these people might reveal to you.

6) Advent means “coming,” and specifically the coming of Jesus. Write one of the many names for Jesus in the daily box. Here are a few of the many ways we refer to Jesus: savior, messiah, friend, Prince of Jesus, Emmanuel…. Use the Bible, Handel’s Messiah, Christmas carols, and hymns to uncover those names. Pray and ponder how that name for Jesus stirs, affects, annoys, delights, or inspires you.

7) Choose a word from the daily lectionary readings for the season. Here is a link to the Vanderbilt University site for the daily readings.

7) For smaller children, print the calendar on 11″x17″ paper and just let them color. Light a battery-powered votive candle and give them a quiet, secret place to work. The Advent Tree template might be a simple one for a child to use.

2019 Advent Calendar Templates in .pdf  form.

Click on the links below the pictures for the one you want. When the image appears as a  google doc, click on the download button at the top (the square with the downward facing arrow). Download first; then print. Feel free to share the calendar templates with others, for individual or group use.

Thanks to Cindy O for creating the Box Calendar template for 2019.

Notes:

  • Advent is short this year. It starts on Dec 1 and lasts 24 days.
  • Each calendar has a space for Christmas. On the Advent Tree Calendar it is the star. The Angel Calendar has the face of the angel.The Box Calendar has the central oval. The Star Calendar has the large Star of David in the center.
  • I like to enlarge the 8.5″x11″ format to 11″x17″ card stock. It gives me more room to doodle and color and consequently more time and space with the person or word.
  • Thanks to Cindy O. for the 2019 Box Calendar template.

P.S. If you have trouble downloading the template, send me an email from the Contact page and I’ll send a calendar template to you directly. Sometimes school and church computers or accounts will not allow you to download things from unknown sites on the internet. If you contact me, use your home email instead of a school or church email. If you would prefer a .jpg, contact me.

Yes to Easter!

by 3 Comments Leave a Comment

Yes to the new creation! Yes to Christ is Risen! Yes to all that I do not understand about this new beginning! Alleluia!

This year I am neither exhausted nor “sooo ready for Lent and Easter to be over.” What is different from past Lents was not bingeing on a multitude of spiritual practices. Lent is a time to go down, go deeper, and go spelunking into the dark and unexplored caves of the heart. I misread this as an invitation to gather up a overlarge slew of spiritual tools and start digging: give up something, take on something, read more, pray more, blog more, meditate on my shortcomings, exercise more, snack less, be kind, do a complete makeover in 40-some days….

A week into this overzealous archaeological expedition, I know I have overpacked; so many tools are a burden. But I trudge on with grouchiness and guilt added to the load. Self-shaming and trash talk about my spiritual inadequacy make me the center of all this exploring. I forget that the inner work is not primarily about me, but about connecting with Jesus. I’m not sure why I overload during Lent. I don’t know if I try to out-holy my efforts from the year before. But with uncharacteristic kindness towards myself, I think it’s more basic than that. I am hungry, really hungry for a deeper and more loving relationship with God, other people, and myself. Bingeing and hoarding on spiritual practices seems like the logical, if misguided, way to get what I need.

Thanks to a three-week cough right before this Lent, I did not have the energy for rounding up as many tools as usual. I picked one calendar template and one devotional to use with it. With his book Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C: A Daily Devotional, New Testament scholar and retired Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright was a terrific guide for my Lenten exploration. Each day Wright offers a passage from Luke, a reflection, and a prayer. I chose one word from the daily reading, wrote it on the calendar, thought about it, doodled around it, and listened to it. The practice felt spacious and satisfying rather than burdensome. And I was not alone. Luke, N.T. Wright, and Jesus were there with me. That one simple word became my manna for the day. Not too much, not too little. Food and Enough.

Stations of the Cross

by 1 Comment Leave a Comment

When people as early as the 4th century began to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land from Europe and Asia, they wanted to walk the route Jesus took from the place of his death sentence by Pilate to the place of his crucifixion and burial. This walk became known as the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows. At each stop along the way, pilgrims sang hymns, read Scripture, and said prayers.

Stations of the Cross are a way people can experience this journey of tears without traveling to Jerusalem. Many churches have paintings or sculptures of these events or stations on their walls. Over the centuries the number of stations depicting Jesus’s journey to the cross and death has changed.. Fourteen is the common number for many churches now. Each station offers an opportunity to enter into the story, to contemplate, and to pray. Holy Week and especially Good Friday are typical times for praying the Stations of the Cross.

If you are unfamiliar with this practice, you can explore websites with the history of Stations of the Cross. There are thousands. Also look for Images. There are many examples of Stations of the Cross liturgies with prayers and readings. Click here for one example.

Below is a template for you to make your own Stations of the Cross journey with Jesus on paper. Each of the fourteen cloud shapes has a sentence for the station and an empty space with a cross. As you imagine yourself in Jerusalem on this sorrowful walk to the cross, add your own images, doodles, or words. Read. Sing. Think. Pray. Be there.

Download a pdf. or .jpg template. Download it first then, print. The sequence of stations is left to right, row by row, starting at the top of the page.

Two Weeks of Lent–A Visual Diary

by Leave a Comment

I love this one-day-at-a-time, one tear-at-a-time journey through Lent. Lent for Everyone–Year C by N.T. Wright is a thoughtful combination of Scripture and reflection. The devotional includes a daily reading from Luke followed by a meditation from the author. As I look back at the growing pathway of words, I remember the stories from the Gospel. (Or on Sundays, a Psalm) Some of the words I chose are from the Luke reading itself: others are from the reflection piece. Both readings challenge me to rethink my relationship with Jesus. I’m trying to read not to confirm the opinions and beliefs I hold so tightly and arrogantly, but to receive what God might be asking me to consider or rethink or affirm.

The word combined with the doodles has been a helpful prompt to remember, review, and refresh my thoughts and prayers about the readings from a particular day.

How I’m Using the 2019 Lenten Calendar Template

by Leave a Comment

This year I’m combining the Tear Drop Spiral Template with a daily devotional called Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C: A Daily Devotional by N.T. Wright. In many liturgical churches, the Gospel readings for the Sundays of Lent this year (Year C in a three-year cycle) are from Luke. Wright’s devotional takes a daily small chunk of Luke and goes through the whole Gospel during the Lenten season.

Each day I read the passage from the Gospel of Luke and Wright’s reflection on it. From either the gospel or the reflection I choose a word that jumps out at me. Sometimes the choice might require more than one reading. Then I write the word in a space on the calendar. Yesterday’s word was seed. I wrote it in the starting tear drop dated March 6. On a separate piece of paper I wrote the word seed and started brainstorming about the word. I call this a data dump. I wrote down everything that came to mind when I thought of seed—no editing. What I write about a word might be silly or serious: I’m just clearing my mind of all preconceived ideas to make room for new ones.

When I feel empty, I stop writing and start doodling around the word of the day. The doodling can be abstract or realistic. It doesn’t matter. But I stop overt “thinking” and just listen to the word. “What does it have to say to me today? What might God be saying to me through this word?”  I doodle and color and try to get still on the inside. For me, this is taking a single word and praying it, or letting it pray in me.

If words, phrases, or feelings come to me while I’m drawing, I write them down—on the same page as before or on a new page (or even on the calendar). When I finish drawing, I might sit with the word/drawing or look at the brainstorm page again. Sometimes insights come; sometimes silence and quiet are enough. Time spent with the chosen word and with God helps to frame my whole day. I love this simple, day-by-day process of staying in touch with God and orienting my outlook on life.

Baby was my word for Day 2.

It’s not too late to download a template. See the March 4 or February 15 post.

Additional Calendar Templates for Lent

by Leave a Comment

Lent starts this coming Wednesday, March 6! Here are two additional Lenten Calendar Templates. Click on the version you want below the picture; download; and print. The first one with the hearts was created by Pat Maier of Visual Faith Ministry. It has 40 spaces. For more ideas about how to incorporate art with your prayer life and Scripture study, visit the Visual Faith Ministry Facebook page and website. The second template is the Cross template from last year. Counting the divisions on the cross, it has 46 spaces to include the weekends during Lent.

Hearts 2019 pdf
Cross .jpg  or .pdf

Instructions on how to use the calendars and examples from previous years are on my blog post from February 15. Or you can click Here to download a Word document of the Instructions.

Here are the first three calendar options from the February 15 post.

Spiral Tears Calendar 2019 pdf
Box Calendar 2019 pdf
Stained Glass Lily 2019 pdf

The Journey Through Lent on a Calendar Template

by 8 Comments Leave a Comment

Using a calendar template is a simple, daily prayer practice for making the journey through Lent. Each day choose a word to ponder or a person to pray for. Write the word or name in the allotted space with a pen and draw or doodle around it. Add color with colored pencils or markers. Let the word or name speak to you. If words come to you as you draw, pray them. If not, just continue to draw, stay quiet, and let the word or name burrow into your mind and heart. Returning to the calendar each day establishes a hallowed time and a place to be present to God and listen.

Think of each mark of the pen or stroke of a colored marker/pencil as a small non-verbal prayer. The goal of the doodling and drawing is not to make a beautiful work of art, but to create a visual prayer. Drawing/doodling invites the body into the prayer, gives the eyes and hand something to do, and helps to focus attention on the word or person.

Praying on the calendar is a visual and kinesthetic Lenten discipline. The accumulation of words or peoples’ names on the calendar creates an emerging tapestry of your spiritual journey through the forty-plus days of Lent.

BELOW are three templates to download. Choose the one or ones you like and click on the link below the calendars. Download the template first, then Print. Below the templates are some suggested ways to use the calendars. Since the spaces are small you can take the template to a copier and enlarge it (129%-132%) onto an 11″x17″ piece of card stock. Although Lent is officially 40 days, there are 46 spaces on each template to include the weekends. Further down the page are some finished templates from previous years. Feel free to Share this post and the templates with others. 

Spiral of Tears Calendar .pdf
Box Calendar .pdf
Stained Glass Window w/Lily Calendar. pdf

Ways to Use the Calendars:
1) Pray for a person each day of Lent.

2) Use a daily book of Lenten meditations. Read the mediation for the day and select a word that jumps out at you. Meditate on the word as you draw and color around it. Let it enter your heart and mind. Ask God what you need to hear from the word.

3) Follow a daily lectionary and choose a word from one of the Scripture readings.

4) Read the same Psalm each day and choose a daily word. Psalm 51, for example, is a penitential Psalm with lots of juicy (sometimes depressing) words in it.

5) Read a different Psalm each day and choose a word.

6) Use nouns or adjectives that describe the nature and character of Jesus: savior, redeemer, healer, radical, obedient, forgiving,…

7) Since Lent is a time for reflection and self-examination, scatter your confessions, character defects, regrets, worries, fears, and sorrows on the template. Ask the Holy Spirit to be present as you reflect on these. This is not meant to be an exercise in self-flagellation, but a way to be honest with yourself and draw closer to God and god’s unconditional love. Mix in some dreams, hopes, and thanksgivings.

8) Create a visual gratitude list. Each day add a word or an image. The items on your gratitude list can be important and profound or simple and fleeting: a cup of coffee, a walk around the block, a smile from a child….

Here are three examples of finished calendars from previous years.

Thanks to Lynne M for permission to use her calendar in the middle from 2011.
Thanks to Connie D for her Lenten calendar in the top row of calendars, second from the right.

Sing, Sign, Expect–Advent Words

by 4 Comments Leave a Comment

Below are a few verbal and visual reflections on words from#AdventWord 2018.

#SINGing is my primary learning style. It is probably not in the educators’ official handbook of learning styles with auditory, verbal, visual, kinesthetic…but it includes all of those ways of learning. With melody and emotion thrown in, singing is a full-bodied way to import information into my entire being. Almost everything I know and remember about God, Jesus, and Scripture, I learned in Song.    December 17

 

 

 

There are #SIGNS everywhere–portents of doom, promises of prosperity. We can read the signs in the news and on TV and claim that biblical prophecy is now being fulfilled in both the portents and the promises. This is not new news. People have been matching current events with biblical prophecy in a one-to-one correspondence for at least 2000 years. This exercise seems a little self-focused, a way to confirm smug beliefs and opinions about how the world works and what MY God will do. But God will do what God will do.  More important for me than sign interpretation is to ask “What kind of sign am I?” How do people read me? Am I a sign of God’s love, compassion, and hope or am I a billboard slathered with words of self-righteousness, judgmental certainty, and despair?  In John 4:48, Jesus says, ” Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” Current events may be signs, but I believe Christians are called to be living signs and wonders.      December 21

I #EXPECT a good meal and service when I go to a fine restaurant. I expect teachers to pay attention to my children and grandchildren. I expect my husband to make me happy. I expect to receive good things from God if I am a good girl. But these EXPECTATIONS have an unpleasant ring of entitlement to them. My expectations are not necessarily reasonable and often doomed to end in disappointment and resentment.  I  like the word EXPECTANCY better than EXPECTATION.  Though the roots of the words are the same, the first feels like an attitude of wide-eyed openness and humility rather than a sense of entitlement and arrogance that the second implies. EXPECTANCY helps me to honor the possibilities beyond my limited wants and imagination. What I think I can EXPECT is a God who surprises, who may not give me what I want or expect but who makes all things new.   December 22

 

 

 

Wild and Cry–Advent Words

by Leave a Comment

For the first nine days of Advent I have really enjoyed combining praying in color with #AdventWord. Everyday #AdventWord (adventword.org)  sends  an email with a new word and a reflection on the word. The chosen words are based on the Advent lectionary from year C. Most of them are familiar, returning Advent companions. But Sunday’s word jarred me and my thoughts went wild. The word was WILD. Instead of just drawing, I started writing:

WILD
Jesus tames the wild, but Jesus also wilds the tame. For people like me who seek the safe, easy, and comfortable way, he discomforts. I choose the path of the good-girl Christian. She’s the one who follows the rules, wants to be perfect, memorizes the Beatitudes and Ten Commandments, respects authority, doesn’t make waves, tries to please, goes to church every Sunday, smiles…. I don’t think Jesus objects to any of those things; they are good things– except if they get in the way of following Him. For me, it’s easier to follow rules. It’s hard to follow the Jesus who calls for wild, sometimes risky discipleship.

“I am the Way,” says Jesus. Possibly, the wild way, the unpredictable way. Jesus steers me off the 8-lane highway of comfort and conformity, asks me to unbuckle my seat belt, and takes me onto the narrow path through a forest of thickets, roots, and brambles. The only navigation tool is Jesus Himself. My mother warned me about men who said, “Follow me.” “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14 NRSV). (But this is Jesus, mom, okay?)

He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness; You will see rare beasts and have unique adventures. These are the stunning words of the poet W.H. Auden. This wild Jesus who calls me beyond my familiar boundaries is the one I want to follow–but I am so afraid to do so.

 

Monday’s word was CRY.
CRY
I almost never cry. Not at funerals, not at weddings. Except recently, at the drop of a hat, at the movies, at pictures of my granddaughter, at funerals…. I have wondered: “Why all the crying? Did I have a stroke? Or is my heart actually softening?” In one of those strong, rare, inaudible voices I heard: “Doesn’t matter. Trust the tears.”

 

 

Leslie Lepage is also combining #AdventWord with a calendar template. Here are her visual prayers/meditations on the words.