What might it look like to pray with all our senses? This question gnawed at me as I was preparing for our annual Celtic Prayer Retreat and thinking about designing a new prayer trail. Our theme for the retreat was “Celebrating the Goodness of God with All the Saints”. We are indeed “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1). As I wrote in an earlier post, even creation surrounds us, giving testimony to the goodness of God. I wanted this prayer trail to open all our senses to the world around us, to help us to listen deeply, to hear with all our being the whispers of God.
If you are able you might want to read this while sitting in a park, walking a trail and stopping periodically along the way to pray, or while sitting in a garden. If it’s helpful, you can click on each picture to get the full view. While I haven’t tried this yet, it might be interesting to walk into your neighborhood or even downtown in your city and go through these prayers. If you do, please comment below and share you experience! Most importantly, don’t rush. Relax, breathe, and release your senses, and your imagination, to God. The Holy Spirit will take it from there. Enjoy!
1. Raise your dominant hand, index finger to the sky. While making a circling motion with your finger/hand, Pray:
Circle me, Lord. Keep hope within, and despair without.
Circle me, Lord. Keep peace within, and worry without.
Circle me, Lord. Keep love within, and hatred without.
Circle me, Lord. Keep courage within, and fear without.
Circle me, Lord. Keep light within, and darkness without.
As I walk this path, circle us all with your love, protection and grace.
2. Pick up a rock, hold it in your non-dominant hand:
- Feel its texture.
- Observe its color.
- How might this rock symbolize some area of your life?
- Give thanks.
3. Feel the earth beneath your feet:
- Can you sense its unevenness?
- Can you feel the force of your weight in your legs, your feet?
- Can you sense the earth supporting you?
- Reflect on the truth that out of earth you were formed.
- Give thanks.
4. Gaze through the trees to the sky above:
- What do you see?
- What obscures your vision?
- What emotions are evoked as you stand under this canopy of God’s creation?
- Give thanks.
5. Slowly observe the creation around you – take in 360*:
- Surrounded by creation, can you also sense being surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses”?
- This path is a circle around the center of our retreat. How are you part of the great cloud of witnesses with the people gathered here?
6. What is this rock you are carrying?
- Do you still have it?
- What things in your life are like this rock, you carry them around, perhaps even forget you’re carrying them, but they are always there?
7. Slowly breathe in deeply… slowly exhale all the way.
- Slowly breathe in again. Can you taste and smell the creation around you?
- Slowly exhale, giving thanks to God for the gift of creation.
- Slowly breathe in again. As you breathe in, thank God for the gift of sustaining breath.
- As you slowly exhale, thank God for inviting you to participate in giving life to others.
8. Close your eyes and listen:
- How many different sounds can you hear?
- How many can you identify?
- Give thanks for the voice of creation praising its maker.
9. Stop for a moment and feel the air:
- Does it feel hot? Cold? Warm?
- Can you feel a breeze?
- Close your eyes and remember. Does this temperature evoke any particular memories?
10. Circle Prayer:
Circle me, God, with the great cloud of witnesses. Keep hope within and despair without
Circle me, God, with deep, spiritual friendships. Keep love within and fear without.
Circle me, God, with the beauty of your creation. Keep stewardship within and exploitation without.
As I re-enter the gathered community, circle us, God, keep fellowship within and division without.
The invitation below was written as part of our sharing opportunities at the retreat.
* If it seems fitting, place your rock in a pile on the Alter. Together we create a stone pile of remembrance, an “Ebenezer” – “Thus far the Lord has helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12). Each stone represents something different, perhaps a joy, perhaps a brokenness. This pile together represents our gathered presence with our varied strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears. We are the body of Christ, each one a part, together rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses carrying together, in Christ, the full array of life’s experiences.
by Jan Blencowe
Mushroom Group by Jan Blencoe
It is the model of the Trinity, that beautiful dance of Divine Persons that inspires my favorite mode of prayer, dialog with the natural world. I envision that beautiful Dance as one of perfect communication. I imagine it as moving between thoughts, words, movements, intentions, and actions. I sense a wisdom, that anticipates, responds, and exists in an harmonious union. A perfect communication grounded in love and holy motive, never misunderstood, never duplicitous, always and eternally pure and truthful.
Of course, I must rely heavily on the Spirit to sanctify and translate my humble, earthy prayers into something beautiful that will delight the heart of God. Since this lovely picture of the Trinity’s Dance of Communication remains firmly locked in the world of my own thoughts, that is to say, “stuck in my head”, I’ve had to find more embodied ways to pray, ways that use all those things that were deemed good at the very beginning.
I am the archetypal nature child, and therefore head straight out the door and into the glorious handiwork of God when I want to pray. Nature follows the existence ordained for it perfectly. We on the other hand have the blessing of choice. The choices we make snake through our lives like a labyrinth, sometimes moving us closer, sometimes further from God. I pray we will all, at the end, find ourselves in the center of Love.
The seasonal cycles that God has built into our world hold endless fascination, comfort and wisdom for me. In my nature journals I record those cycles, which in itself is a form of earthy, creative, embodied prayer. Currently, in my journal I am turning my attention to the beginning of the dying year. The season of the dying year always speaks volumes to me and generally produces a time of deep prayer in my life.
This season, unlike any other, brings to my attention Jesus’ words “Timeless truth I speak to you: Unless a grain of wheat falls and dies in the ground, it remains alone, but if it dies, it yields much fruit.”. That translation is from the Aramaic Bible in Plain English, and I love it because it translates the opening words not as Truly or Verily, but as Timeless truth. The cycle of life-death-rebirth is for me the crux of the matter when it comes to the spiritual life, and it’s in the pageant of seasons that I see that played out most vividly.
At this time of year I find myself praying with mushrooms. They’re abundant in the woods in September. I marvel that all year they have been there hidden from sight beneath the forest floor. I pause to remember that the Spirit’s work in me is also always going on. Sometimes it is hidden but when the Spirit softens and moistens my heart and I am ripe to receive, the work is revealed, just as mushrooms appear suddenly when the weather dampens and the season ripens.
During all of the hidden phase of their lives mushrooms are absorbing nutrients through threadlike roots from decaying trees. In the same way I am always absorbing wisdom and encouragement from the saints, those great towering trees of our faith, who remain alive but have now passed from this world. I give thanks for the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds me. Later on when the first frosts come the mushrooms will once again die back and be hidden in the soil feeding the roots of nearby plants and trees. They will literally be recycled and take on new form.
A new crop of mushrooms will appear briefly again in early autumn. Life-death-rebirth. These observations lead me to pray that my own brief appearance on this earth will be nourished by those faithful souls that surround me. When my body perishes and my flesh and bones are hidden in the earth, I pray that they will nourish the soil. I pray that the words I have spoken and the deeds that I have done in my lifetime will nourish those that remain and those that come after.
Like the mushrooms that are recycled into trees I ponder with awe and wonder the reality that I too will put off this mortal body and be clothed with an immortal one. Even more mysterious is the knowledge that we have already put off the old and become new creations in Christ. So on earth as it is in Heaven, I pray with the earth through the turning of the year finding spiritual truths in nature, praying with mushrooms and trees and all that is good.
Today’s post is part of our September Creative Prayer Series.
Prayer is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing. Barbara Brown Taylor An Altar in the World.
There is a difference between prayer and prayers. What stirs our creativity to pray without ceasing? Here is a list of the best books we have found.
Bill, Brent and Booram, Beth: Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God.
Brazzeal, David: Pray Like a Gourmet: Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul.
Cameron, Julia: The Artist’s Way
MacBeth, Sybil: Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God.
Sine, Christine: Return to Our Senses: Reimagining How We Pray.
Stanley, Kelly O’Dell: Praying Upside Down: A Creative Prayer Experience to Transform Your time With God.
Scandrette, Mark: Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love.
Taylor, Barbara Brown: An Altar in the World; A Geography of Faith.
Tutu, Desmond and Mpho: The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World.
Valters Paintner, Christine: Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice.
Some years ago I preached a sermon on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. I opened with a description of a large mural that I could see clearly in my mind. Painted on the mural were people at work. In one corner, a man drove a tractor, and next to him a nurse tended a patient in a hospital bed. In another section, a cook put food on a plate, someone with a hard hat used a heavy tool, a woman taught a computer class to high school student and a man taught ten year olds about dinosaurs. Off to the right, a doctor examined a pregnant patient, and someone was making a bed in a hotel. Scattered amid the images I’ve mentioned were more people engaged in other forms of work, both paid and unpaid.
drawing by Dave Baab
After I described this imaginary mural in my sermon, I said that God looks on the mural with joy. I affirmed that God created us with the ability to work so we could participate with God in sustaining the creation and in caring for the people God loves. God is pleased, I said, with the ways we use our talents and energy in our work, and God is with us when we work and longs for us to be faithful servants in our workplace.
After the sermon, a man in his seventies came up to me. He said, “I worked for more than 40 years for the railroad. No one ever told me that my work mattered to God.” He had tears in his eyes as he spoke. I was deeply moved and also deeply frustrated that this lovely man had felt that his life with God was something that did not connect with his work.
Yes, our work matters to God, whether that work is paid or unpaid. Yes, we are called to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ in the workplace, in our homes, and in all arenas of life. No area of life is isolated from God’s presence and our call to be disciples. Labor Day provides us with the opportunity to reflect on all the work we do. Do you know deep down that all of your work matters to God? Do you experience yourself as Jesus’ disciple in every kind of work you do?
Here are some options for reflection:
- Create a drawing that resembles the mural I described, using stick figures if you don’t find drawing easy. Draw yourself in all the kinds of work you do, paid and unpaid. Pick colors to indicate where you feel God’s presence and guidance, and other colors to indicate where God feels absent, and use those colors to reflect on how you experience God in your work. After you have created the drawing, spend some time praying with it.
- Think about the word “disciple.” In Jesus’ time, a disciple followed a rabbi, in a literal sense as they walked together and in a metaphorical sense by modeling life after the rabbi’s teaching. Think about all the aspects of work in your life. In which forms of work is it easiest to be a disciple of Jesus? In which forms of work is it hardest? Pray about yourself as a disciple as you work.
- Ponder your balance of work and other aspects of life. A rabbi once told me Jews try to keep four aspects of life in balance: work, rest, family and making a difference in the world. In which areas of life do you think you are being mostly faithful as a disciple of Jesus? In which areas would you like to grow in following Jesus? Pray about this.
“Follow me,” Jesus said (Matthew 4:19, John 21:22), and he was referring to all of life. Yes, our work matters to God.
by I have not always seen myself as a creative person and my prayer life reflects that. I became a Christian in my teens and adopted a rigorous program of prayer and scripture study. I loved it but sometimes felt a little stifled by its restrictions. There are three things that have particularly inspired creativity in my prayers and drawn me closer to God in the process:
Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny – photo Coe Hutchison
Inspired By The Garden
Claude Monet said: I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. I think I could say that I owe my prayer life to the garden. It was getting out into the garden that started to change the way I looked at prayer.
It wasn’t just that the garden was a great place to pray. Like Monet I found it also stirred my imagination and creativity. Inspiration came from the amazingly creative variety of flowers, plants, bees and other creatures that inhabit my garden. Even the compost pile with its transformative power increased my confidence in God’s ability to transform all things.God is so creative I realized and calls me to create as well.
I started to see God in colours, shapes, textures, aromas and sounds. I took photos, arranged flowers, planted gardens. New thoughts, new words and new concepts bubbled up inside me and found myself writing prayers and poems. As I say in my book To Garden With God, I read about the story of God in the Bible, but in the garden I experience it…. and now it has transformed me.
Question: What aspect of God’s good creation provides inspiration for you in your prayer life?
Prayer board
Given Permission Through Liturgy
Tom and I go to an Episcopal church. It is not where I grew up, but about 20 years ago I found myself increasingly drawn to the Sunday liturgy and to the liturgical pattern of the church calendar. The rhythm of the service, the beauty of the prayers, the changing seasonal focus and the rich heritage this connects to have been another source of inspiration for me.
Of course it wasn’t long before I found myself wanting to mess with the litanies we used. I started to change them so that they became more personal for me and connected more to the current issues we face in our world. I created symbols, like my Advent prayer gardens, that held more meaning in today’s world than the traditional symbols of the seasons, and not surprisingly, started writing down prayers that reflected this.
A couple of years ago our church held an icon workshop. I really wanted to go but couldn’t afford it. So I thought, lets make my own painting. And that was how I started painting on rocks. Poor man’s icons I call them and like icons my painted rocks are more than a painting for me. They reflect something of my own soul’s journey and provide a window that reveals more of God to me.
Question: What aspect of your church life provides inspiration for you as you seek to pray more effectively?
Mural in Balmy Alley San Francisco.
Inspired By the Neighbourhood.
Several years ago when we were in San Francisco, Mark Scandrette took Tom and I on a walk around the neighbourhood. The murals on walls, buildings and even park benches amazed and inspired me. This is a form of prayer I realized. These artists are expressing their pain and suffering, their hopes and joy. Each of these pieces of art is a cry of the heart towards God.
Walking the neighbourhood, getting to know my neighbours, shop keepers, homeless people on the corner are all ways to connect to God’s love for this world in which we live. These encounters inspire me to pray not just for my local community but for the entire world.
Question: What aspects of your neighbourhood inspire you to pray more creatively and diligently for God’s world?
Mother Teresa of Calcutta at a pro-life meeting on July 13, 1986 in Bonn, Germany
Mother Teresa has always fascinated me as a multi-faceted woman with seeming contradictions: small of stature and large of heart, enigmatic and charismatic, a shining light for others who spent her latter years in dark-night-of-the-soul territory.
On this, her feast day, we celebrate a woman of great faith, an Albanian nun and missionary who fervently lived out her devotion to Jesus and those whom she ministered to. She is widely admired as a carrier of compassion who lived out the Gospel, revealing the love-in-action character of Christ to a needy world.
She has inspired many with her humility and grace as she transparently breathed out the beauty of God’s hand on her life. Beatification came in 2003 and canonization was granted on September 4th, 2016. Her strong sense of duty, ardent desire to live out her calling and swift obedience to her Lord and Saviour are a wonderful example to follow.
We look at people like Mother Teresa and wish we could do more, be more, serve as she did. Yet each of us has an individual calling on our lives that can change over time. Our personal calling can often be challenging to discern and live out. It requires a surrendered heart, mind and life, and few knew this better than Mother Teresa.
When we submit to God, we develop a growing dependence on Him in a relationship marked by faith, love and trust. Mother Teresa eschewed worldly comforts and recognition. She lived a life of poverty and deprivation but she was content with what she did have – the joy of her Saviour’s presence and love, and her eagerness to support others.
Her burning passion was to help outcast, sick and impoverished souls, offering them the love, care and compassion of Christ. It was no easy task. For years she fought her own impatience and the seeming intransigence of her clerical elders, as she implored to be allowed to begin “His work” in the founding of the Missionaries of Charity. Now her influence is worldwide, with centres in many countries.
In my early days of faith I became involved with street evangelism and city missions. My calling seems to have evolved into one of predominantly staying put to pray and encourage others. I look wistfully at those who travel to distant lands to convey the fragrance of Christ, who work with their hands in a practical way.
It feels like Mother Teresa and I are worlds apart, until God reminds me of the wonderful words she shared, as He spoke His wisdom to and through her. Those words are still being noted and quoted. He reveals that thinkers, creatives, writers and word-smiths have great potential to touch lives in the here and now and leave a lasting legacy to come.
Lest we become discouraged by the paucity of our own faith-walk, we can be reassured there is room for the quiet contemplative, the extrovert, introvert, the physically active and those whose lives may be confined and constrained by chronic illness, for rich and poor alike as we all reveal varying aspects of the glory of God to others.
In the body of Christ we cannot all be eyes, a mouth or a hand, nor busy feet, but we each have a unique offering to bring to the table of grace, a place no-one else can fill. Our heart attitude matters more than our skill. God will fill in the gaps of our insufficiency as only He can.
Imperfect and inadequate as it may seem, you and I can offer more than we know, including: a listening ear, a hand to hold, intercessory prayer, a word of hope and encouragement which reveals Christ’s love to others. We play our part in God’s plans as He writes His greater narrative in people’s lives.
The quote below (attributed to Mother Teresa) reveals how our sense of smallness need not detract from our ability to shine the light of Christ in a dark world:
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.
by Jenneth Graser
How do you love to spend time with your loved ones, your family and friends? The ways are as vast as the relationships. Each person comes with their special and unique personality and friendship is shared. There are times of chatting, laughter, meals. There are walks to go on, bikes to ride, places to swim. We may like to go out to a museum, a gallery, a show.
We may like to sit in silence and be completely at ease in one another’s company. We may go to the beach, to a restaurant. We may go to the movies, or relax in a lounge in front of the fire playing board games. We may like to do art together, read books, play sports, go to a market. We may like to garden together, work together, listen to music, do church life together. You can add to the list!
God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – the Trinity of perfect relationship. We have been designed for relationship. And to relate with God in this perfect union in the Trinity, is to be one with Father, Son and Spirit. There are as many ways to pray and be with God in relationship as we can imagine sharing with our closest and dearest friends and family.
So often we may feel like prayer is something challenging to accomplish. God may feel afar off. We may feel like we need to have all our theological “ducks in a row”. We may feel spiritually blocked. But prayer is as accessible to us, as our breath. Prayer is as natural as relating with a friend. Jesus is our friend and brother and desires to break open our ideas about prayer that have not always served us well. Where in our lives can we experience a fresh new insurgence of creative inspiration in prayer?
What follows is a variety of ways we can enjoy God’s presence – yes! This is Prayer! You are Praying!
Choose a painting or work of art to spend some time with.
You may have an actual piece, or you may find something in a book, magazine or online.
Look at it. Observe for some moments what is there.
What are you drawn to?
What do you feel?
Share this experience with God.
“In the beginning God created…” Genesis 1:1
Go for a walk in nature.
Feel through your senses.
Feel the elements, the ground beneath your feet, the air, the sun or rain or wind, the weather…
Feel your blood flow through your body, your heart beating.
Notice what catches your attention as you walk.
Look at the view.
Share your gratitude with God.
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Psalm 8:9
Put on a piece of instrumental music.
Listen, while lying down or sitting comfortably.
Notice your breath – breathe deeply in and out, filling your diaphragm.
Remember what it is to be loved by God.
“…praise him with the strings and flute…” Psalm 150:4
Sit down with your child or grandchild.
Hold your child and listen to what they have to say.
Ask questions.
When you have welcomed a child, you have welcomed God.
“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.” Matthew 18:5
Slow down, sit in a garden.
Notice life around you: the sounds, the sights, scents, colours.
Watch without getting up, watch for awhile.
Feel the sun on your skin, the shadows, the breeze.
Feel the presence of God in the stillness.
“I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride…” Song of Songs 5:1
Switch off appliances, the microwave, computer, telephone, television.
Pick up your camera.
Take pictures.
Observe life.
Capture the moment.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…” Matthew 6:25
Put on a piece of music.
Move to the music.
Move your body, respond to the rhythms.
Let your body be the prayer.
“He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Make a collage.
Select pictures from magazines.
Put them together on a page.
See what comes up for you.
How do you feel?
What do the pictures symbolise for you?
Share your collage with God.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
Write down a dream you remember.
Write down the feelings you connect to your dream.
Notice any symbolic images that may speak of something deeper.
Share your dream with God.
“Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” Genesis 40:8
Choose a poem.
Read it and then read it again.
Which parts of the poem are you drawn to?
What feelings arise?
Share these thoughts and feelings with God.
“My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king…” Psalm 45:1
Take out a world globe or atlas.
As you turn the globe or page through the atlas, ask the Holy Spirit to highlight a city, country, people group or area.
Raise these people up in prayer in the presence of God.
Your intercession is incense.
Let your will be done Father, on earth, as it is in heaven.
“…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10
Read a Psalm.
Choose one verse that especially stands out to you.
Write it out. Illustrate your page.
The word is flesh, the word is God come to us in the person of Jesus.
The word is alive in you.
“I have hidden your word in my heart…” Psalm 119:11
It is a great adventure in prayer, our relationship with God. I encourage you this month, as we celebrate creative prayer practices throughout September at Godspace, to explore your creative prayer time with God using whatever suggestions appeal to you. You may like to choose a few, or you may like to focus on one. The invitation is to feel the invigorating life of God’s love and creative power infuse our relationship with fresh new life. There is always something new God desires to share with us.
Take some time with God as you read this poem, from my devotional Catching the Light:
Prayer?
I find Christ curving road in my car
He sways side to side, bending gravity
With each corner, not held to the ceremony
Of my appointment prayer stool
Not waiting patiently in the pews
For stained-glass contemplation.
My hands on the wheel, not bedtime-prayer
Poised; my eyes on the road, not reverently
Closed; tapping out time on the gas
I accelerate prayers into orbiting hands.
All along it takes one word to release
Greater power than ten-page supplication
Intelligently read from high street corners.
I basket up my bread and fish, lower
Paralytic men, request long-distance
Healing with Gentile Centurion plea.
In my thoughts, “Jesus”
Is prayer; I capture grace for them like
Light in amber, release the resin
Of the Tree of Life into hearts.
Prayer handkerchiefs float down,
Green leaves bud; a baptism of streams
Well out of desert beds, scented oil
Drips the hems of a dress
As my prayers take off
Out of my car on a Sunday traffic road.
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