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July 4th Prayer for Us and the U.S.

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 The 4th of July is not just a yearly extravaganza for fireworks and picnics—although it is that.  Every 4th of July offers new situations and challenges, new reasons for gratitude and celebration, and new opportunities for our nation’s self-examination and correction.

Here is a blessing prayer for us and our country. Sources for the quotes are below the drawing.

A Happy and Safe 4th of July to you and yours.

1. Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
2. America, Our Heritage, Helen Steele–a song I learned in elementary school and still remember.
3. Psalm 91: 5-6 KJV.
4. There’s A Wideness in God’s Mercy, Frederick William Faber.
5. Emma Lazarus.
6. Nelson Mandela.
7. Galatians 5: 13 NRSV/NIV.

Praying in Color Retreat July 10

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Paraclete Press is sponsoring a series of one-day summer retreats online. I am excited that Praying in Color will be one of them. If you have not been to one of my workshops or retreats, I hope you will consider attending. Please invite your friends and Share this post with others.

Below is the description. The cost of the retreat is $65. To REGISTER Click Here. 

Praying in Color: Old and New Ways to Pray

in an Ever-New World

Friday, July 10

with Sybil MacBeth

Prayer is the opposite of multi-tasking. It is the gathering of the mind, body, emotions, thoughts, and spirit into the same geography and inviting God to be present there. In this retreat we will gather (safely) as a community to explore praying in color—the visual, active, and meditative prayer practice introduced in the 2007 book Praying in Color: Drawing A New Path to God and its 2020 expanded/updated version. If you are word-weary, restless, antsy, or anxious in prayer or just looking for a new way to connect to God, come explore the versatile practice called praying in color. Bring paper, a black pen, and colored markers or pencils. Doodlers welcome; absolutely no artistic skill necessary! Check out Sybil’s website and blog: prayingincolor.com.

Schedule:

9am First Session—Intercessory and Blessing Prayers  with Q&A
10:15am Health break
10:25am Join Us for a Tai-chi Virtual Warm Up
10:45am Second Session—Griping, Grieving, Grounding, and Gratitude Prayers with Q&A
12pm Lunch Break with Visual Presentations from Paraclete Press
1:30pm Third Session—Praying With and In Scripture with Q&A


Sybil MacBeth is the author of Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God and other books in the series. She combines her years of experience in the mathematics classroom with her lifelong efforts in prayer to lead workshops and retreats across the country. As an inveterate multi-tasker, she loves to sing, dance, doodle, read, cook, spend time with her sons and grandchildren, and lead workshops. She lives with her husband Andy in Florida while they await the “all clear” for spending a year in Jerusalem.

This retreat is non-refundable unless cancelled by the host.

If you are unable to attend the live retreat at the hours given, we welcome you to register anyways, and if you contact us, we will send you, at no extra charge, the retreat link that you can watch over the following three days.

For questions, please contact Sr. Estelle at [email protected]  To register: Click Here.

View the other Paraclete Retreat Offerings for the summer.

Blessing Prayer Template

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Below is a template for creating a blessing prayer. See my post about blessing prayers from June 5. The “arms” on the template can hold the words of the blessing. If you run out of arms, you can use some of the other spaces for more words. Color and say the prayers to yourself or out loud. Or just sit in the quiet with the blessings as a backdrop for a silent time with God. Add more doodles, lines, arcs, marks…to the existing ones. Next to the blank template is an example of a partially filled-in blessing prayer.

Download the blank template by clicking on the word .jpg or .pdf. below the picture.

Blessing Template .jpg

Blessing Template .pdf

 

Please let me know if the blank template is too gray.  I have been trying to fix that! Thanks.

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.