A young mother in our parish is in surgery today. This is a prayer for her and the family members I know. Imagine invisible blossoms and prayers for the ones I do not know. God is with you, Jenny. Sybil MacBeth ©2010
Blog
I have been writing the Praying in Color blog for over a dozen years. The entries include theological musings, memoir, reflections on life and Scripture, and hundreds of posts on ways to incorporate Praying in Color into your prayer and spiritual life. In the search bar you can type words like “Scripture, Advent, Lent, calendar templates, intercessory prayer, mourning, gratitude, forgiveness…” or other topics of interest to find related posts. I hope you enjoy exploring this site.
Who’s in My Bed?
One way I test my spiritual well-being is to notice how many people have crawled into bed with me at the end of the day. If it's just my husband Andy I'm in pretty good shape. But if the phantasms of many others are clinging onto me and taking up precious psychic room...
Mirrors
I've spent years of my life warming-up at ballet barres and dancing in lines in the center floor of ballet studios. What every one of those studios has in common are mirrors on as many walls as possible. Dancers learn to correct their technique and their artistry in...
Maundy Thursday Footnotes
Last night at church, a pair of women washed my feet. I washed a few sets of feet as well. Tittering and giggling were plentiful from the people hunkered at the basins of water. I heard multiple apologies like, "I did just take a shower before I came." "I had a...
Stamp Collection
Here are a few weeks of my Lenten stamp prayers. Even though this looks like the artwork of a kindergartner, the visual collection of prayers reminds me to pray. Praying in Color is not about creating great art. It's about taking time to pray and creating a visual...
Palm Sunday Procession
One of my favorite Sundays of the year is today--Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday. We read the Passion narrative and receive communion inside the church. Then we parade with palms and drums up to City Hall--about 2 blocks away. We gather there with up to ten other downtown...
Party-Line Prayer
My friend Ron and I talk a lot about prayer. He says he thinks of prayer as a "conversation already in progress." I'm not sure exactly what he intended when he said this, but it reminded me of the phone system my family had when I was a young child. We had...
Portable Prayer
I almost always carry a small notebook or sketch pad in my purse or backpack. It gives me a place to make notes or draw a prayer. Here's a prayer I drew while waiting for a organ concert to begin. When people see me hunkered over a pad of paper they hesitate to begin...
A Greed of Glasses
On Tuesday, my husband and I jumped in the car at 8PM and drove four hours en route to participate in a Lenten preaching series two states away the next day. Andy was preaching at noon; I was presenting a mini Praying in Color® workshop in the evening. We packed the...
More Stamps
My prayer-stamp drawing exercise has been erratic. Instead of a stamp or two a day, it has been more like four stamps one day, no stamps for five days. So much for daily discipline. A daily discipline is supposed to help me with my binge-purge mentality about life. I...