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Blessing Prayers

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Blessing Prayers are one of my favorite ways to pray. In a blessing prayer we address directly the person we are praying for. A very old example of a blessing prayer is in the Book of Numbers 6:24-26:

May the Lord bless you and keep you;
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Blessing prayers have a different feel to me than intercessory prayers, those prayers in which we ask God to do something for others. We make intercession for others for a multitude of reasons: for physical healing from illness, safe travel, healthy pregnancies, a new job, or happy and stable marriages. Intercessory prayers ask God to intervene and help. “Please, God, free Maria from her addiction.” “Almighty One, protect our children at college.” Compassionate Healer, release John from the grips of this virus.” “Loving Jesus, fill my child with joy.”

I like the blessing prayer form because it is less specific and more expansive than intercession. Finding the “right” words for my extemporaneous intercessions is difficult for me. Using a blessing prayer format gives me a framework for corralling my words. It stimulates my poetic imagination about my hopes for my friends and the world. Here are a few of ways I pray blessing prayers:

May the God of Love surround you.
May the God of Joy delight you.
May the God of Mystery surprise you.
May the God of Hope sustain you.
May the God of Wisdom direct you
May the God of Freedom release you…

OR

God to enfold you.
God to enliven you.
God to comfort you.
God to accompany you.
God to refresh you.
God to unbind you….

OR sometimes maybe we need to call forth blessings on ourselves as a reminder of who we are and whose we are.

Creator of All, unite us.
Stream of Justice, trouble us.
Path of Righteousness, turn us.
Singer of Love, teach us.
Binder of Wounds, heal us.
Freer of Captives, release us.
Light of Light, awaken us.
Bread of Life, feed us….

Maybe the difference between blessing and intercession is just semantics, but blessing prayers seem like prayers of affirmation rather than just prayers of asking. They focus on the person but also on the infinite nature of God. When I offer a blessing prayer, I imagine I am unfurling an enormous canopy of God’s goodness and power onto someone. I feel like I am anointing a person with holy words and acting as an agent of God’s love. I want the people I pray for to look up and feel covered with the vast, bright gossamer of God.

I love combining blessing prayers with praying in color, ie. doodling prayer. I often use them for cards of condolence, birthday and anniversary wishes, and healing.

A simple way to draw a blessing prayer is to use the “two-stroke” prayer format. You can see the complete instructions in my September 12, 2016 post called Two-Stroke Doodled Prayers. Here’s a quick synopsis.

  • Draw a shape in the center of the page.
  • Write the person’s name in the middle of the shape.
  • Draw lines or arms from the shape, as many as you need for the blessings you want to include.
  • Write your blessings along the arms.
  • Choose two shapes to use–lines and circles or arcs and V’s or…see the instructions and start to draw and add color.
  • Pray the blessings as you doodle and color.
  • You can always sneak in more arms for additional blessings that come to you.
  • The example below uses arcs and lines.

Many traditional Irish prayers follow a blessing format. John Michael Talbot’s God of Life 1980’s album has several songs that fit this pattern. His songs God and Betwixt Me are two especially beautiful examples of blessing prayers. I have kept these songs in my repertoire of memorized prayers and sing them whenever I feel the need for blessing.

COVID Confessions 5–Intercession and Confession

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Intercession: Just about the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning is the wonderful little nightlight my friend Suzanne made for me. (See below). When we moved to Florida I brought it with me and plugged it into a socket into my mother-in-law’s 1970’s bathroom. When I see it in the morning I always say, “Good Morning, Suzanne, Good Morning, Matisse, Good Morning, God.” (The abstract design reminds me of my favorite artist Henri Matisse’s flower paintings.) Saying those “Good Mornings” has become a ritual. Looking at the light a couple of days ago, I thought the design would make a great template for intercessory prayer. The lilac rectangle/vase represents God, the source from which all life emanates; the colored tissue-paper-looking blossoms are the people for whom I am praying. Below is my nightlight/Matisse inspired intercessory prayer.

By the way, my friend Suzanne has written a wonderful book called Bead by Bead: The Ancient Way of Praying Made New. Beads are a visual and tactile way to pray. You can see my review of her book on amazon or the post I wrote about the book on July 11, 2018. My husband and I both have prayer beads she made. We plan to carry them with us when we finally go to Jerusalem.


Confession: A few days ago my husband and I took two paper grocery bags and walked to the next street over. The street backs up to a large Presbyterian church complex and marks the far edge of the church’s property. It is lined with a four-foot tangle of pin oaks, palmetto scrub, and vines. The untended thicket is a perfect place for people to throw empty beer cans and water bottles from their cars. In fifteen minutes, we had filled both bags–Busch, Coors, Bud Light, Icehouse, and Mike’s Harder Cranberry cans. I have to admit to a certain sense of pride and even self-righteousness about being a good neighbor and citizen. Then I thought, “I won’t tell anyone what we did and that will make it a really selfless act.” Then the voice on the other shoulder jabbed me and said, “Self-righteousness is self-righteousness, sister, whether you say it out loud or keep it in the pride box of your mind.” So I’m saying it out loud because it did feel good to clean up the neighborhood. And it felt right. And in cleaning up and saying it out loud I actually feel less disdain for the people who trashed up the road to begin with. Now when I walk by, I’ll get to enjoy the the green stuff on both sides of the road–the Spanish moss, the elegant oaks, the palmettos, Confederate Jasmine, Angel Trumpet….

Confession: I hope a few people have watched the YouTube video of Jana Riess interviewing me about Praying in Color. The interview covers most of the important things I think about praying in color, explains why it “works” for me, and gives examples of several different ways of praying. It is free to watch through Wednesday. After that, there is a small charge, I think . Click on the poster to watch it.

The Feast of Pentecost–Today

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Pentecost, one of my favorite celebrations in the Church year, is vibrant, sensory, exciting, colorful, unpredictable, wild…. Yesterday was an unanticipated Pentecost Preparation Day. I woke up with a little bird, as it were, pecking at my mind for me to get up and read the Pentecost story in Acts 2:1-21. The verses describe the cataclysm of “a mighty rushing wind, the tongues of fire, and the Holy Spirit descending upon the multitudes.” I read the sensational Acts passage and decided I wanted to draw a circular stained-glass window with the Holy Spirit and the tongues of fire inside. A 5-inch bowl made a great template for the window. But when I started to draw, the Holy Spirit refused to stay in the circle. The tongues of fire refused to stay in the circle. And I thought, “Isn’t that just like the Holy Spirit? Try to cage It and you are always in for a big surprise!”

 

When I read the Acts lesson, I also underlined some words in the text and doodled a visual response in the margins of my Bible. I am not a regular Bible journaler, but I like the process of entering Scripture with a pen and some colored markers or pencils. I read the passage or page and then try to be still and listen as I draw. I’m not as brave as some of the people who pray this way and dare to illuminate the text itself with drawings and lettering. (Check out some of the Facebook pages or websites about Bible journaling. Visual Faith Ministry is one example.)

Visual engagement with Scripture helps me to remember the passage for later encounters with it. I see the colorful bookmark-like drawing on the side of the page and I’m back in the Word. This artistic response feels different than Bible study. In Bible study, I feel the need to master the material and get information. I try to dissect and analyze the words, have control over them, and understand them once and for all. “Okay, I know what that’s about, let’s move on.” The hardened quest for information tamps the possibility for transformation. I am like the poetry students who Billy Collins laments in his poem Introduction to Poetry*:

“But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.”

 

If I substitute the word “scripture” for “poem,” the lines describe my sometimes uninspiring and laborious relationship with the Word. When I enter the Scripture, instead, with my backpack of art tools and start to draw, I release the need to pin down the Word and hear its final confession. To give up control of the Scripture feels scary and dangerous, like I’m inviting the Holy Spirit to take me blindfolded on a trust walk or an expedition of uncertain destination. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8 NIV) Who knows where such an expedition might lead?

 

I remembered the picture below from a few years ago. The big swath of silk fabric behind me was a costume my mother wore, probably in the 1930’s, for her role in The Firebird, a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky. For several years my husband Andy wore it as the celebrant’s garb in Pentecost services. Right before we moved to Florida in April, I found it in a cedar chest. It practically disintegrated in my hands. I’m glad I had it for as long as I did. Firebird feels like a terrific image for the Holy Spirit.
*Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. To read the whole poem on the Poetry Foundation website, click here.

Prayer for Sheltering and Memorial Day

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High on my gratitude list is the wonderful variety of people I have “met,” either in person or online, because of Praying in Color. These are people I never would have known otherwise. We have met through my website, via email or social media, or at real flesh-and-blood Praying in Color workshops. At the workshops I present, we focus on prayer. We talk about our ongoing efforts to be in touch with and have a relationship with God.

I introduce praying in color as one of a zillion ways people can pray. Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Church of Christ , Mormons, Non-Denominationals,…all flavors of Christians plus an occasional Jew or Muslim attend my workshops. Sometimes I don’t even know where or how they worship. AND I don’t know how they vote or whether they think women should be pastors or if they tithe…. Although these may not be unimportant issues, there is something much more rudimentary and primal about prayer. It bypasses the censoring of the brain and issues from the heart and the gut. For me prayer is a hunger, a need that surpasses my opinions and beliefs. People I have met because of Praying in Color show me how they pray and offer me new ideas to bring me closer to God. I am so grateful.

Cynthia C. is a new online friend. She is responsible for Children’s Ministries at a church in California and wrote to me to see if I could do a virtual Praying in Color presentation for families with kids sometime during the early months of the sheltering-in-place quarantine. I was packing up my house to move and not available, but we have stayed in touch. This morning she sent me a short video called Sheltering in God by pastor David Jeremiah that inspired her prayer time and the visual prayer below. The video shows how many people in Scripture have, for various reasons, been sheltered in the past and how God used the time of sheltering for their spiritual formation. I love Cynthia’s prayer because she connects the sheltering of the Biblical characters with her own sheltering and fears, with all people who are sheltering, and with hope for the healing and renewal of our nation.

This Memorial Day I honor the people who have formed and sustained our country. I pray for families and friends of the almost 100,000 people who have died in the U.S. of the coronavirus. I will also pray for Tom, Cynthia’s 93-year old father who has COVID-19.

COVID Confessions 4–Prayer and Webinar

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Confession: I hope you all will join me on this Zoom webinar on Wednesday, May 20 (2 days from now) sponsored by Paraclete Press. Thoughtful and funny, Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood and The Twible, will interview me about Praying in Color–where the idea came from, how it has changed and expanded in the 15 years since I started doing it. The webinar will last about an hour with time for questions. Click on the picture below or on this Link to sign up; it’s FREE. If you receive these posts as an email, please go to my Blog and Share via Facebook or other social media. Thanks.

Confession: I am a bumbling extemporaneous pray-er.  I get all shy and tongue-tied with God when I try to come up with accurate prayers to communicate what’s in my head and on my heart. Words escape me when I need them most, which is weird because I have always loved words. As a kid, novels, biographies, A Child’s Garden of Verses, encyclopedias, my little red KJV Bible, and Scrabble were constant companions. So I am very grateful for the Sunday School teachers of my childhood for whom words were so important. They taught me the prayers of our tradition and asked me to memorize Psalms, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, hymns, and one-line verses of Scripture and proclamations of faith. By the time I was eight or nine, I knew Psalms 23, 91, and 100 by heart. Sixty-some years later they are in the hard-drive of my memory and still accessible. When my own words fail in prayer, I join the unheard voices of millions of other people who recite these several-thousand-year-old hymns as part of their spiritual routine.

A couple of the favorite one-line prayers I learned in Sunday School are: “There is no spot where God is not.” “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”* “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”(Mt 5:4 KJV) “Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you.”* “In Him we live and move and have our being.”(Acts 17: 28 KJV) All of my memorized prayers, Psalms, hymns, and simple affirmations of faith are like a wardrobe of prayer shawls from which I can pick and choose. They enfold me and wrap me with the assurance that I am always in the presence of God.

Anne LaMott’s lovely 2012 book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers is a reminder that prayers do not need to be complicated or articulate, just honest. One word is sometimes all the prayer we need..

While I was packing up and getting ready to move from Tennessee to Florida in April, I found a poem I wrote in May 2009 called Three-Letter Prayers.

Three-Letter Prayers

The night in full bloom,
The star-filled sky
Flings paperwhites across the heavens.
WOW!

The open-handed man
In showerless stench,
Asks for my coins and my eyes.
NOW?

A long-loved friend,
Sobered up and free at last,
Dies
WHY?

The 8-hour surgery,
In the hands of Doc and God,
Brings relief and new life.
YES!

 

*Mary Baker Eddy

COVID Confessions 3–Familiarity

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Confession: When I first got married, my mother thought it was her duty to pass on some wisdom and admonitions from her own experience of marriage. Her favorite quote was: “Familiarity breeds contempt.”  As a somewhat prim and proper Victorian lady, her examples were things like “Don’t run around around the house in your underwear in front of your husband.” “Don’t come downstairs in the morning without brushing your hair, applying your makeup, and pulling on your nylons.” (later read as stockings or panty hose.) “And for heaven’s sake, don’t ever use the bathroom when he is in there.” This was her Familiarity 101 course for her newlywed daughter. I have pretty much ignored the first two statements. I’ve paddled around in my underwear and I almost never wear makeup or panty house, so the second point is moot. The third, though perhaps TMI, I pretty much adhere to, for reasons of aesthetics as well as propriety.

With a marriage of over 53 years, until death they did part, my mother’s favorite quote has merit. But not just with surface and superficial familiarities. Observing my parents’ long marriage and wading through trials and errors in our own marriage, my husband Andy and I have learned that too much familiarity can destroy a relationship. Familiarity, for me, means disrespecting the physical and psychic boundaries of another person. My sin of familiarity takes the form of assuming I have the right to fix and mold Andy into the person I think he should be. I forget where I stop and he begins. This entanglement assumes that I know everything about him, that I can predict his next move or his next words, that I know what is best for both of us. Familiarity, then, equates to arrogance and stifling presumption.

Living in the boundaries of quarantine is a perfect breeding ground for too much familiarity and the resulting contempt. Andy and I are in each other’s space from dawn until dawn until dawn…ad infinitum–or until at least June. Finding the balance between our togetherness and solitude has been a marriage-long tutorial. How well I have NOT completely learned these lessons comes out as I get annoyed by small things and start nipping at him. “Why did you put that there?” Who just called you?” “What are you doing?” “Are you wearing that to the grocery store?” “Do you have your mask and gloves?” “What did that text say?” These questions are intrusive and parental.

Familiarity becomes a kind of reverse idolatry. I come up with an image of someone and then stick with it, concretizing it into a solid never-changing form. That image my be positive or negative; neither is a good idea. I have always had the image of Andy as super smart, reliable, and a good institutional, community-building pastor. Can I let go of the hardened familiarity and security I have with those roles?  I also thought of him as opinionated, stodgy, and a by-the-book kind of guy. As he has become more playful, more sentimental, and less judgmental, I have been forced to see him with fresh eyes, less familiar and predictable, but more intriguing.

Familiarity makes me feel comfortable because I assume I know the person I am living with; there are no surprises. But this familiarity is not the loving choice. My relationship with my spouse blossoms when I let go of the stereotypes I have about him. When I treat him with the courtesy and curiosity I would offer a guest or a stranger, I remember that he and our marriage are an ever unfolding mystery, the new creation of two “becoming one flesh”—even after fifty years. During quarantine I miss the physical presence of friends who call me into accountability for my unloving behavior.

I am immensely grateful that the person I share this stay-at-home time with is reliable and smart, but also playful and sentimental, and kind and forgiving and a good cook. If my mother were alive, I think she would agree with my version of familiarity. But she would probably also tell me to brush my hair more often and quit wearing the same clothes for three days in a row.

 

Observation: Much of our settling into a mini Florida jungle has included untangling life-threatening vines from trees and plants. A week or so ago, under a bunch of vines, I discovered a small “field” of snake plants, also known as “mother-in-law’s tongue.” I first encountered this plant 20 years ago when a friend gave me one as a new-mother-in-law gift. It could just as easily be called Mother’s Tongue or Father’s Tongue or Spouse’s Tongue. The plant is a great visual reminder for me to think before I speak.

 

COVID Confessions 2

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CONFESSIONS
Things done and left undone, things said or not said, acts committed or not committed…in this unfamiliar world of staying at home

OBSERVATIONS
Things I’ve noticed and observed in this unfamiliar world of staying at home

Confession: I’m suspicious of my and other people’s quick pontificating on the meaning of this pandemic or how it will change us all forever or what we are learning from it. We are a creative and adaptable culture. We learn swiftly and improvise with flair. It is our gift as Westerners, as Americans. Sheltering-at-home has given us opportunities for our imaginations to fire and our survival skills to flourish. We are also a culture with a short attention span. An addiction to newness and excitement is our curse. Quick conversions to the newest diet, exercise program, books, TV series, clothes, phones… make us restless for the next thing coming down the pike. (“A pike. What’s a pike?” We don’t even have those anymore, do we?) The semi-permanence of the pandemic has sunk in and many of us are now tired of sheltering-at-home. Boredom threatens to send us outside too soon looking for something else and the next phase of our lives. And here I am making a quick pronouncement about who we are and who you are and what we are all thinking. I shutter at my own efforts to make proclamations, especially since I know that the pandemic has not just inconvenienced some, but has had devastating personal and economic repercussions for many.

Observation: I like giving things away. Last month we closed the sale on our house in Memphis and stashed fifty years of stuff into a 10’x15′ storage unit. We gave away most of our furniture. Much of it was from our childhoods. I never knew that saying goodbye to tables, chairs, couch, credenza, dressers, a piano, desks…could be so much fun, so satisfying. We posted the items on Nextdoor one at a time. When someone was interested we moved the piece to the front porch—to comply with social-distancing—and watched and waved as neighbors piled things in pickups and on roofs of cars. In the Photos app on my phone, I have an album called Bless and Release. The items below are in the album as well as dozens of other pictures of things we have given away in the past fifteen years. Although we no longer want or need these items, I am grateful for all of them. Maybe now they will get to be loved by new owners.

 

Confession: I am a skeptic, sometimes even a cynic. Reread the confession at the top of the page if you doubt that. A few weeks ago I heard a terrific sermon about a famous skeptic from  Elizabeth Felicetti at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA. Thomas, the guy who doubted Jesus and wanted proof that Jesus had wounds, had died, and had risen, was a skeptic. We faithful Christians often lambast him for his doubt.  But Elizabeth had a different take on Thomas: “Jesus’ disciples needed a skeptic, so that other skeptics could see themselves in today’s resurrection story. (John 20:19-31) All twelve disciples had different functions, different calls. All twelve. Even Judas. Thomas earlier showed himself to be brave and faithful. His skepticism here led to great faith. Thomas was called to skepticism.” I like the idea that Thomas was “called” to be a skeptic. Healthy skepticism is clarifying and balancing. Whatever news sources I read and listen to, I need to receive with a skeptic’s mind and not assume it’s all true OR all false. When someone offers me a new product or a new way to live, I need to ask questions and weigh the answers. Part of my skepticism, however, is not healthy. It is just plain fear, the paralyzing kind that makes me incapable of decisions and action. My skepticism can be an intellectual pretense to hide that fear. I want to be be skeptical like Thomas but also “brave and faithful” like him. (To read Elizabeth’s whole sermon click here. It is both brave and faithful.)

Observation: I really enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles, especially with another person. Mostly I like the 500-750 piece versions. 1000-piece puzzles feel so hopeless, so interminable, and then there are the teeny tiny pieces forming endless swaths of brown or black. I also like the playfulness of the less complicated puzzles, like the one we are doing now called Tree-Dwelling Slowpokes, a 500-piece puzzle from a company called mudpuppykids. I bought the puzzle online from the Urban General Store in Chicago. I’m learning the names of some sleepy animals I never heard of before. Assembling a puzzle is also a nice way to spend quiet, communal time with a friend or to listen to an audible book together.

COVID Confessions 1

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Sheltering-at-home brings out my best character assets and my worst character defects. It also heightens my temptation to draw conclusions and impose meaning when confessing and observing might be more honest and real. In this post and several more are some of my confessions  and observations about things done and left undone in this unfamiliar world of staying at home.

Confession 1:  I did not finish my Lenten Calendar template by the end of Lent. I finally filled in the last space, Holy Saturday, this past Sunday, two weeks after Easter. I started getting behind about the second week of Lent. Then came the words of self-recrimination: “lazy, unfaithful, hypocrite, blah, blah….” Then these words came to me: “You’re packing up your house of sixteen years, giving away most of your furniture, selling and moving out of the house, leaving family and friends, driving close to 1000 miles to shelter in a new place, and waiting to see if you will actually get to spend a year in Jerusalem with your husband as planned. Maybe this is enough work for Lent, loved one.” And maybe my normal planned ways of practicing Lent needed a little shakeup. So my daily practice of reading a scripture passage, reading a correlative meditation, and responding with colored markers and pen on the calendar template became sporadic and bingey. And that turned out to be okay.

What I hadn’t paid conscious attention to during Lent was the circles on the calendar—little worlds of words spiraling around the page. Most of my prayers and reading in the past couple of months have focused on the world—its interconnectedness, smallness, and susceptibility. My Holy Week reflections were all prayers for the world. A theme had emerged throughout Lent without my conscious planning.

I used the same devotional this year as I did in 2016, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent by Walter Brueggemann, Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. Brueggemann’s daily devotions and the scripture passages that inspired them read differently to me this year than in 2016. I suspect that if I had read them on time, two weeks earlier this year, they would have been different, also. On the Saturday before Palm Sunday, I chose “YES” as my word for the day and wrote it in the appropriate circle. The scripture reading was Exodus 17:17 (NRSV): “[Moses} called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” A few sentences of Brueggemann’s response: “Yes, God has the capacity to transpose wilderness into an arena for life. Yes, God is reliable. Yes God is faithful. Yes, God is an adequate source for life in a context of scarcity and anxiety….The story is about God’s inexplicable capacity to do well-being in a world that has been shut down.” ZING! My late reading of these words put me IN the drama of Scripture, not viewing it from the outside: “In a world that has been shut down…” I hear this question over and over again: “Is the Lord among us or not?” And contrary to the overwhelming evidence of God’s absence, I know strongly in my head, heart, and body, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” My lateness and laxness did not keep me from this Good News.

Grieving and Mourning–A Praying in Color Lesson Plan

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Guest blogger Mary Ann Stafford is an artist, an educator, a musician, a writer, and a mother of eight children with 25 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren! At 87, she describes herself as an over-achiever. Her complete bio at the bottom of this post confirms this!

Mary Ann started using praying in color to mourn and pray when her husband of sixty years died. Even before his death, she had felt God calling her to facilitate a grief support group for those who had lost loved ones. She began this mission at her church and at the local senior center.  Although not a registered grief counselor, she has been blessed with facilitation training as a teacher and administrator as well as being a Stephen Minister at her church.

She learned and studied many different “coping skills” to help people with their mourning—ways to accept and get through the pain however long it takes.  Examples include writing in a journal, talking about it with others who have been through the same process, walking outdoors, exercise, reading and art therapy- any way to get the hurt out in the open instead of holding it inside.  Praying in color exercises seemed to fit right in, so she adapted some of the methods to use with her grief groups. “These were much appreciated by the members, especially since they could come back to their prayer doodles anytime in the present and/or future to see their reconciliation progress,” said Mary Ann.

Mary Ann has graciously agreed to share one of her lessons. This first lesson plan called Making A Memory Map involves thinking and praying about beloved memories of those who’ve lost loved ones.  She calls it a “memory map.” Below is an example of a “memory map” and a guide for leading a grief session In Mary Ann’s words. Before you share the idea with a group, do it on your own several times. New memories will pop up each time you do it.
Making a Memory Map
 by Mary Ann Stafford

I’m going to introduce a different way to pray as well as a way to mourn your loved ones.  It’s commonly known that drawing and painting are ways to conquer stress, lower blood pressure, and express emotions. It’s also fun!  The idea originally came by reading Praying in Color – a book by Sybil MacBeth that uses doodling with colors as a prayer experience.

Here’s what you need to know:  Approach it with an open mind – you don’t have to be an artist – just “play” with colors. You don’t have to be an artist – you’re not replicating anything. IT’S THE PROCESS, NOT THE PRODUCT – THINK OF IT AS JUST DOODLING!  NO RIGHT OR WRONG –

THINK LIKE A CHILD:  As it says in Mark 10:15, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.”

You can do this at home as well – in the morning or evening in your prayer spot. Only simple supplies are needed: even just with black or blue ink pens and paper.  Do this in your journal, or on any kind of paper.

MATERIALS:  5X6” SHEETS OF PAPER, COLORED MARKERS WITH TWO DIFFERENT SIZED NIBS.

SHOW MY EXAMPLE: Above is one of my examples. I started with the words “Precious Memories” instead of my husband’s name, but that made no difference. I could have continued on and on – there were lots of memories. I seem to always start in the middle, but you don’t have to do that.  Start anywhere on the paper and take your time.

CENTERING: SIT UP STRAIGHT, BREATHE IN AND OUT, SILENTLY ASK THE HOLY SPIRIT TO HELP US. PLAYING SOME QUIET MUSIC WOULD ALSO HELP.

START WITH THE NAME OF YOUR LOVED ONE SOMEWHERE IN THE CENTER: Make a shape around the name – any kind of shape – pray about him/her, and think about him/her as you do – embellish with some detail – enhance the shape as you pray for his/her soul – add colors that you like.

THINK ABOUT THE MEMORIES YOU HAVE: – Something you always want to remember – write a brief note, make another shape, either connected to the first or separately and decorate it with colors.  Keep going with more memories until the paper is filled, you run out of memories or time. Thank God as you go for these beautiful memories you never want to forget.

When finished, turn your drawing over and write the date on the back.  Then you can come back to it time and time again to relive those blessed memories.

CALL TIME AFTER 20 MINUTES:  Share your drawing and the memories with the others.  What colors did you use? How is your pattern different from others in the group?  What other ways could this process be used? Listing what you’re grateful for? Your gifts and abilities to use for others? Your shortcomings, dreams, worries?

END WITH A BRIEF PRAYER.

Here are a couple of other examples of Mary Ann’s memory maps. Thanks to Mary Ann for these ideas.

Mary Ann Stafford’s Bio:
Dr. Mary Ann Stafford is a highly recognized artist who resides in Maumelle, Arkansas. Her education credentials include a BSE and an MA degree in English; art hours from Kansas City Art Institute and the UofA, and an EdD in Secondary Education with an emphasis in art education. She began the art program at Pine Bluff High School where she taught English and art, later becoming assistant principal.  She retired from the Arkansas Department of Education.  In addition to formal art training, Stafford has continued to take and teach art workshops.  She is a Signature member of the Pastel Society of the Southwest, Arkansas Pastel Society, Arkansas League of Artists, and Mid-Southern Watercolorists.  As a regular exhibitor, she has won major awards in Arkansas and Texas.  Her paintings are in private collections in Arkansas and several other states.  Her web site is www.staffordart.com; her teaching blog is at www.pastelanne.wordpress.com.

 

Easter Sunday Prayers for the World

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It was on Easter Sunday and all in the morning

Our Savior arose and our Heavenly King

The sun and the moon they did both rise with Him

And sweet Jesus we’ll call him by name.

(This is the last verse of an English carol that starts with “It was on Christmas Day….”)
I love the image of the sun and the moon rising with Jesus.

 

Easter Day Template .pdf                                 Easter Day Template. jpg

 

Here are the lectionary readings for Easter day:
Acts 10:34-43
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18
Matthew 28:1-10