The colored markers I took on my Santa Fe vacation turned out to be almost exactly the same colors as the landscape in the region. Maybe there was some Southwestern painter floating around my mind when I packed. Santa Fe is so beautiful I wanted to use the local colors and the geography to shape my prayer drawings. I’m not an artist, so usually when I try to pray with images of real life objects it destroys my attitude of prayer. My inner art critic goes into hyper-judgment mode. This time I warned her ahead of time to keep her mouth shut.

From an artistic perspective the results were pretty puny. A friend asked me what the tepees were for; the tepees were really mountains. I did, however, manage to pray for the people in the drawing without too much distraction or self-loathing. The shapes and colors stuck in my mind and reminded me to pray.

In general, I’m better off using the simple strokes of abstract doodles. Doodling keeps me in the now without focusing on the “success” of the end result. If you are an artist who can really draw mountains (or even if you just want to draw mountains), please feel free. Draw whatever tames your wandering mind or helps you to focus on God in prayer. Lines, arcs, dots, triangles, zigzags…seem to work best for me.