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.
September theme —
The prayerful imagination: praying creatively for a more meaningful connection with God and others
With the leadership change at MSA/Godspace, and with our September Godspace theme, we thought it was a great time to select Christine Sine as our Author of the month and to re-highlight her book, Return to Our Senses: Reimagining How We Pray.
As we move into the final four months of the calendar year, many of us are already planning for Advent and the beginning of the church year.
No, we’re not trying to keep up with the commercial drive to get Christmas items out on the shelf earlier than ever. But September begins the planning season for many churches and perhaps there’s something here for individuals as well.
Whether you’re from the northern hemisphere and are entering fall or from the southern hemisphere and looking forward to spring, this is a season of changing rhythms, and it’s precisely at these times of transition that it’s good to reflect and reimagine our spiritual practices.
- Has your praying become mundane?
- Do you feel like you’re just going through the motions but aren’t really connecting with God?
- Are you entering a season of critical discernment and want to discover new ways to listen and respond to God’s promptings in your life?
Then this month’s theme is for you! Join us on the Godspace Community Blog and read how others have unleashed their praying imaginations. Better yet, why just read? Join our writing team and share with others what you’re doing; you know — sharpening iron with iron. We learn best by learning with and through others.
Godspace Featured Author for September: Christine Sine
Christine may have retired from her administrative duties, but she’s far from done with writing and speaking!
Because our Godspace theme this month fits so well with Christine’s passion, and because we want to make sure you all know that she’s still here, calling us to a more prayerful and active life, we’re featuring her this month.
And just in case you weren’t aware, her book Return to Our Senses: Reimagining How We Pray is an excellent resource as you explore creative prayer practices.
New Prayer Cards Ready for Pre-Order
Ready to ship on or before September 15th, the Praying with Nature set of ten prayer cards is designed to help us listen and learn from nature.
From prayers to poems to a simple challenge to see through new eyes, each card is a meditation for the day — or week. There is plenty of room on the backside so you can also send them as postcards or jot reflections and personal notes.
Godspace Community Blog
Did you notice the text change at the top of this page? It’s easy to miss but really quite significant. Our header now reads, “Godspace: a community blog”
“What’s in a name?” you might ask. Good question! Well, with over 50 contributors from more than nine different countries, with over 1,200 blog subscribers and averaging over 1,000 views a day, the answer is You — you’re what’s in our new name. We not only want to recognize you in our name but also thank you for making Godspace the community it is today.
Thank You!
Would you like to do more than just read the blog? CLICK HERE to find out what’s involved, then drop us an email and let us know you’re interested!
I’ll bet you didn’t know there was a saint for hemorrhoids. I didn’t! But there’s much more to Saint Fiacre than hemorrhoids. He is also the patron saint of herbs and vegetable gardens and is honored today, September 1st. If you see a statue in a garden and he’s holding a shovel in one hand and a book (the Bible) in the other, that’s not St. Francis; it’s Fiacre.
A seventh century Irish monk, Fiacre was so skilled at growing vegetables and herbs and knowing how to use them to help heal various ailments, he was inundated with visitors seeking help. In search of more solitude, he left his homeland he ended up in France where, legend has it, was told by St. Faro, Bishop of Meaux, that he could have as much land as he could dig a trench around in one day. Dragging his staff behind him, trees and bushes were miraculously uprooted, leaving in their wake a trench.i
Although he sought out solitude, Fiacre was far from a hermit. He built a monastery where he found retreat for himself and other monks, and he treated the ills of all who came to him. All that gardening was apparently hard on Fiacre. The story has it that his specialty of treating hemorrhoids came after he himself got them from all his hard work in the garden. Then, one day, while sitting on a stone, he was supernaturally healed. It is said you can still see the imprint of his hemorrhoids on the stone where many still travel to be healed of “Fiacre’s Curse”.ii
Hemorrhoids were not his only claim to fame (although for a while they were called the “figs of Saint Fiacre”). Fiacre also was sought out to cure worms, venereal disease, kidney stones, and other issues affecting the skin and digestive tract.iii
But all of this fame flows from his gardening skills. It is written that vegetables and herbs from his garden were of the highest quality. Fiacre’s talent in the garden was matched by his knowledge of herbs and his desire to bring healing to the people around him. I like that. And although I’m not so interested in being known as the healer of hemorrhoids, I wouldn’t mind learning more about the various herbs I grow and how they can be used as a balm of healing or the spice of reconciliation in my neighborhood.
Fiacre’s life also got me thinking about historically recognized saints in general. They were sought out, with people often traveling a great distance to see them (or their relics). Though not Saints with a capital S, we are all saints in the family of God. So what in our lives is attractive to others? Is there something compelling about how we live, some value we add to the lives of others? It’s not that we all need to have some kind of monumental impact, but shouldn’t there be something saint-like about our lives?
As I reflect on St. Fiacre’s life I can’t help but reflect back on my own. He cultivated gardens and attracted thousands. What in my life could I cultivate, attracting people to the message of wholeness, peace, and healing found in Jesus? Perhaps it’s something as simple as gardening… or as mundane as hemorrhoids.
i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Fiacre
ii. http://www.oddee.com/item_96620.aspx
iii. http://harvardmagazine.com/1998/07/vita.html
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More Posts by Andy
Michael Moore —
In stark contrast to the beauty around us that is County Kerry in the Irish Republic, stands a memorial to those who died during the battle for independence. I was overwhelmed by the power of this monument in Ballyseedy when we toured Ireland on our honeymoon in 2014. This particular memorial commemorates the Civil War’s worst atrocity according to the Irish Times. Eight anti-unionist treaty prisoners were tied together and blown up by a landmine set off by loyalist (to the British Crown and the Treaty that United Ireland to England).
One man survived the blast, his name was Stephen Fuller. Stephen, the lone survivor of this atrocious crime, passed an invaluable lesson on to his son, Paudie. Paudie related this story as he reflected upon his father’s life and the miracle of his survival. “He held no bitterness against those who tried to blow him up; in fact, he was full of forgiveness,’’ he said. “My father once said to me that the Civil War divisions should not be passed on to the next generation.’’
Why do I share this story from the Irish Civil War of 1922-1923? And what does it have to do with Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne? In Ecclesiastes 1:9 we read the following: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” Sadly, in Aidan’s time warfare and horrific cruelty were just as much a part of the landscape as it was during the Irish Civil War. Aidan was born in Ireland in approximately 590. As a young lad, he traveled to Iona to study in the great monastic house at Iona that another Irishman, Saint Columba, had founded in 567. As missionaries, they faced warfare and trouble in their own times as they sought to bring the Gospel to the Picts in what would become Scotland (Columba’s mission) and the Anglo-Saxons in the Kingdom of Northumbria in Northeastern England (Aidan’s mission).
While living on Iona, Aidan heard tales from another brother who had been called to serve as a missionary to Northumbria. Corman’s mission had not been successful and he returned to Iona a bitter and angry man. David Adam, in his book “Flame in My Heart” summarized Corman’s thoughts in the following harsh judgment: “He seemed to suggest that these people were not worth the bother, that God could not be interested in them!” (p. 24)
During the awkward silence with Corman and the rest of the community, Aidan prayed… “O Lord, give me springs and I will water this land. I will go, Lord. I will hold this people in my heart.” (Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 158) From that prayer, Aidan spoke these words out loud to Corman and the assembly: “Perhaps, my brother, if you had spoken with more gentleness, and of the love of Christ, giving them the gospel to nourish them like milk is given to a tiny baby, then you would have won them and remained among them.” (Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 158)
Aidan was consecrated a bishop and sent to Northumbria where he founded the monastery at Lindisfarne and began the work of bringing the nourishment of the gospel to the people Corman said weren’t worth the bother. The Lord called and Aidan responded. He left all that was familiar and comfortable because God had called him. He responded in much the same fashion as Isaiah did: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
Aidan responded to God’s call and he indeed did bring the gospel to a people whom others had discarded as not worth the bother! The monastery at Lindisfarne which he established became a seat of missionary activity much like Iona to the west. How did that happen? A quiet monk responded to God’s call with a courage that came from somewhere outside of himself.
Today there are so many marginalized and discarded people who surround us. They are the invisible ones whom society ignores. The poor and the homeless… the mentally ill… prisoners… they have been ignored and so many say that they aren’t worth the bother. Today we are surrounded by hatred, bigotry, racism, misogyny, homophobia, ignorance, and fear. If you aren’t exactly like me in belief, skin color, ethnic background, or religious belief; well then, you are less than human. You aren’t worth the bother.
I thank God that there are people today who, like Aidan of Lindisfarne, are willing to respond to God’s call to love and to bring the gospel to nourish others rather than to beat them over the head. It takes courage and a humble spirit to do that. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to see Christ in the face of those whom others say aren’t worth the bother?
We all have moments like this. Instances which, when we remember them, the creeping heat of shame comes over us: when we wish more than anything that our lives were like computer files which could be deleted – whether a brief, even petty, moment hardly enough to register as a bit or nibble, or in contrast vast Yottabytes of memory. Times which still flash through our consciousness, unbidden and unwelcome, in the waking hours when we feel most alone as the world around us sleeps in apparent tranquillity.
For the woman described in John chapter 8, caught in the act of adultery and brought to Jesus, there is a moment like that which must have seemed to last an eternity. Shockingly interrupted in a moment of deep intimacy (however much it was not theirs to share), she is dragged away, presumably desperately scrambling to pull clothing around her in a futile attempt to cover both her outer nakedness and her inner degradation. Roughly handled by sneering men, past the prying eyes of both strangers and fellow villagers, she is thrown at the feet of the prophet. A man who, she has heard, speaks and does only good. A man whose reputation is even more colourful than hers but profoundly more welcome. She knows she is likely to be stoned, as though this was her act alone. She fears not just the pain of the rocks but the intensifying, were it possible, of her disgrace and humiliation. She may not even be aware that she is actually just a pawn in the attempted set-up by the religious cynics.
Jesus’ bending down and writing in the ground with his finger has birthed much speculation. What did he write? Was it something to help her, and in any case could she have seen it through her tears, her eyes lowered with shame? We don’t know of course, though it is fascinating to imagine. What interests me more though, is that Jesus deliberately chose not to tower over her, emphasising their differences, but to stoop down to her level: a specific example of His entire life stance as he “set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human….an incredibly humbling process.” (Philippians 2:6 The Message)
With piecing insight, Jesus challenges her sanctimonious indicters. They can stone her – it’s the law – but only if they can declare themselves innocent. Did he list their sins, their moments of private disgrace, in the dust? Or was his astute and unrelenting gaze enough? Whatever the cause, they slink away, leaving her alone with Jesus and awaiting, surely, the pain from the first rock from the only guiltless man, the one entitled to throw it.
He doesn’t, of course. Condemnatory stone-throwing has never been Jesus’ approach. Instead he releases her, offering the possibility of a life she has not yet known. She is tenderly handed a freedom she could never have envisaged in that terrifying moment of capture.
Perhaps this might capture a little of her experience….
I had lost all fight
Before they picked up stones.
More exposed there, clothed
Than ever I had been naked;
Seeing the hatred
In their eyes
I knew they were somehow
Stoning something in themselves.
Easier to call me an adulteress
Than see me
As a woman
Seeking some comfort
The only way she knew
When life had crushed
All dreams and hopes.
And then I saw him.
Such difference in his eyes.
Understanding was there
Though no excuses
Seeing past
All shame and regret
To what I could have been.
And could be still.
This month’s theme is listening to and learning from the life of Jesus. Surely there are lessons for either side of this apparent – but actually non-existent – divide? There lurks within each us the potential Pharisee, legalistically criticising the other and trading compassion for a flimsy, false superiority. Equally, we all conceal our failures and regrets, however deeply hidden and of whatever kind, lest they be seen and our private selves exposed, risking rejection by a world we sometimes perceive as infinitely better than us.
Jesus comes gently to us in our tender vulnerability and welcomes us, whether we are more aware of the sinner or the Pharisee within. Not a stone in his hand and no word of condemnation, he writes words of acceptance with his blood, and still sets us free, with the possibility of a life we could never have imagined before the encounter.
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