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Persistence in Prayer

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Below is a prayer drawing I have been using for a couple of weeks. As new prayer concerns came to mind and heart, I added doodles. The act of drawing focuses my prayers and my wandering mind. Every time I look at it, the resulting picture reminds me to pray.

Sometimes when I pray I think I’m being rude to pray over and over again for the same person or about the same issue. When I was a kid, my parents taught me that begging, nagging, and asking for something more than once was impolite.

But there is Biblical precedence for nagging in prayer:

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.’For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ “ (Luke 18: 1-5 NRSV)

Luke encourages my nagging…or as my friend Claire calls it: “passionate begging.” I think I’ll just call it persistence; it sounds a little more polite.
Drawing: Sybil MacBeth 2010

Memorials and Memories

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My mother and father are both deceased. For years they asked my husband and me the question, “Should we be buried or cremated and where?” We talked about the options. But it was not a question we could answer for them. Sometimes, however, I wish I had. They chose to be buried at a cemetery in a building with ten-high rows of drawers. Their remains are at about level five.

I find it difficult to visit there or place plastic flowers in the vases provided on the ground floor between the walls of drawers. The place is cold and a little creepy. Nothing about it reminds me of my parents. Aesthetics were important to them. My mother was a ballet dancer and an artist. My dad loved to putter in the garden with his roses and geraniums.

My aversion to my parents’ burial place makes me wonder why any of us go to a cemetery to honor our ancestors and friends who have died. It’s clear to me; my parents are not in the drawer. My thought is this. I need a place set apart for reflection, honoring, and remembering. I need a tangible place where I have special permission to feel the feelings I have: sorrow, joy, gratitude, awe, guilt, release….

I wish my parents had chosen a lovely, hilly graveside with trees and flowers. But they didn’t. So I use other tangible objects and settings as prompts for remembering. Whenever I look at one of my mothers’ paintings, sit on the hundred-year old couch she passed on to me, or read from my little red King James Bible, I remember and thank her. When I pass by red geraniums or caladiums, my father comes to mind and I smile.

I hope even more than remembering at a cemetery or with an object that my life will ” honor my father and my mother, so that my days may be long in the land that the Lord my God is giving me.” (Exodus 20: 12 NRSV- you was changed to my)

Here is a little bouquet to you, mom and dad…and to all of the others we remember this day who have given us life, enhanced our lives, saved our lives, freed our lives….Thank you.

Drawing: Sybil MacBeth

Black and White Centering Prayers

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Centering Prayer, as I understand it, is a way to still the body and the mind and to deepen our relationship with Christ. It “facilitates the movement from more active modes of prayer — verbal, mental or affective prayer — into a receptive prayer of resting in God.” When I try to sit still and breathe, the fidget factor sets in. My body rebels and wants to be part of the prayer. So I draw. The movement of my arms, hands, eyes, and head helps me to get still on the inside so I can open my ears and my heart to God’s presence. I feel like I’m resting in the hammock of  God.

Here are a couple of black and white prayers I drew to facilitate my prayer of stillness and quiet—my unorthodox version of Centering Prayer. I start with a name from the Trinity and draw outward.

“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” (Psalms 37:7 KJV)

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

Name Prayers

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Here is a simple way to draw prayers for others. Take a colored marker and write or print the person’s name. Take a dark pen and outline the name. If it’s in script, outline the outsides and then the insides. Add other markings and doodles to the name—lines, dots, shapes…. Think of each mark as a prayer, an offering of the person into God’s care. If verbal prayers come to mind, pray them. If not, continue to pray in silence by drawing, holding each person as the “image and likeness of God.” (Genesis 1:26)

My friend Cindy has complete instructions for this process on her blog Mostly Markers. She gave me the idea.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

Portable Prayer

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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 conversation. The pen and pad create a little prayer corner in the midst of a crowd of people. I can retreat to it for some silence and prayer.

This prayer is a vine and a bunch of wacky leaves drawn with a black pen–no artistic skill or fancy equipment necessary!

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

More Stamps

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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 can be so excited and grateful one day, so grumpy and despairing the next; so energetic and active one day, so lethargic the next. I want to cultivate a “This is the day the Lord has made” mentality, rather than a “perfect/imperfect” consumer evaluation of each day.

When I was a kid, I practiced radical perfectionism. For all of my elementary school years, my teachers never received a paper from me with an erasure. I wrote and rewrote my homework assignments until there there was not one corrected word or problem—no smudges, no smears, no imperfection.

I’ve made some progress in this area. So I refuse to chastise myself for an imperfect Lent. I can restart the daily discipline effort at any time.  And when I fail again, I will know that this has been a successful Lent. Lent is not about what I can do, but about what God does. A stamp a day will not keep imperfection away. I will try to remember the whole point of this season—my need and gratitude for a savior.  John Michael Talbot‘s* version of Psalm 62 sings it so well for me: ” Only in God is my soul at rest, from Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock, my strength, and my salvation.”

*John Michael Talbot,Psalm 62, Come to the Quiet, 1980

Sybil MacBeth ©2010

Noise Pollution

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Our adult son lives with us–not an uncommon statement by parents in my age bracket. It’s temporary–or so we keep telling ourselves–until he gets acclimated to a new career. About a week ago, he started on the graveyard shift: 11:30PM-7:30AM.

Not only does his nocturnal work disrupt his sleep schedule, it disrupts my awake schedule. Today I’ve been typing on my keyboard, baking a cake for a friend, and emptying the dishwasher. What I notice is this: I’m a noisy person.  I crash around the kitchen, stomp up and down the stairs with elephantine footwork, and sing and mutter all day long. Even my keyboard strokes are loud and harsh.

So for the past hour I’ve been working on my quiet and gentle skills. Instead of my usual “grab four plates at a time and slam them into the cupboard,” I took one plate from the dishwasher and placed it with clatter-free care on top of the others. With my eyes shut I imagine the way I used to place a slumbering infant in his crib and pray for continued sleep.

Emptying the dishwasher took about eight minutes instead of three. But I remember each plate, each dish. For those few minutes I did not wish this part of my life away as I often do with daily chores. Maybe next time I’ll say a prayer with each plate. Today I just had the pleasure of a job done with attention and care. And I enjoyed the lack of noise pollution in the house.

Stamp Prayers

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My dad introduced me to stamp collecting when I was about eight. He had a couple of navy-blue, hard-cover albums with crunchy-sounding, yellowed cellophane paper separating the pages. Colorful little rectangles were affixed to pages with headings like Mauritania and Helvetia–countries I had never heard of .

Something recently reminded me of those stamps. It might have been a drawing by my friend Cindy on her website Mostly Markers. Instead of using my Lenten calendar template this year, I decided to draw stamps. Each day  I draw one or two stamps for the people I’m praying for. I can imagine my prayer wishes taking flight, airmailed directly to God.

Sybil MacBeth ©2010