Praying in Color

Praying in Color

“Here are some reasons to Pray in Color:

1) You want to pray but words escape you.

2) Sitting still and staying focused in prayer are a challenge.

3) Your body wants to be part of your prayer.

4) You want to just hang out with God but don’t know how.

5) Listening to God feels like an impossible task.

6) Your mind wanders and your body complains.

7) You want a visual, concrete way to pray.

8) You need a new way to pray.”

—Sybil MacBeth in Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God (Paraclete Press, 2007).

Gifted speaker and retreat leader, Sybil MacBeth, takes our prayer life conceptually from the left to the right brain. This type of prayer is especially easy for doodlers. It can initially be painful to those who theoretically live out of their left brain—those who are more verbal, orderly, logical, analytical, methodical in thinking. But praying in color can take that person into a whole new world of prayer. Those who are more right brained, more creative, imaginative, artistic, will rejoice that they can find a new method of praying that validates who they are.

Sybil offers a multitude of ways to use this kind of prayer: as intercessory prayer; as an Advent prayer calendar; as a way to memorize Scripture; as meditative prayer centered around a word or phrase; as a method for lectio divina; as discernment, and many more. We start with a simple shape; put a name or word within it; and pray as we add or decorate or expand or connect parts to the central figure. This adventure in prayer is a recommended method for the logical person who is stuck, and the artistic person whose prayer life seems dry and colorless.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Promises and Fruit

Promises and Fruit

Twelve Promises of AA

“1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. 2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. 3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. 4. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace. 5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. 6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. 7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. 8. Self-seeking will slip away. 9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. 10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. 11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. 12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”

—The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (Alcoholic Anonymous World Services, Inc., 4th edition, 2001).

Do you see any similarity between the promises of a twelve-step program and the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)? Paul writes that we know and feel we are connected to the Spirit, the God within us, if the consequence, the fruit, of what we are doing produces “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” The twelve-step promises and the fruit of the Spirit can both serve as guides—benchmarks indicating to us whether we truly are on the right track—if we are connected to the God of our understanding, the Christ, the Spirit within us. When two disciplines tell me a similar truth, I begin to believe and pay attention to this truth.

We are especially called to look for the fruit of the Spirit as we approach Pentecost this week. The fruit are our guides, our mentors, telling us we are staying connected to the Spirit, the God, within us. The promises also are indicators for those in recovery that they are staying connected to their higher power.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Frederick Buechner, Patrick Murray, Carl Jung: Synchronicity

Frederick Buechner, Patrick Murray, Carl Jung: Synchronicity

“I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter’s illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then. The word was TRUST. … The owner of the car turned out to be, as I’d suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago he found out where I lived and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little battered, and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen.” —Frederick Buechner in Telling Secrets (HarperOne, 1991).

Frederick Buechner so beautifully relates this incidence of synchronicity, or coincidences, or serendipity. Many believe such an experience is an occasion when the unconscious speaks to our consciousness. How this happens is a mystery that Jung and Patrick Murray describe as “a relationship between an inner psychic experience and outer physical event.” A synchronicity is “a meaningful coincidence that contributes to one’s sense of wholeness.”

In spiritual direction, we talk about looking for times of synchronicity, the occurrence of meaningful coincidences, being aware of them and pondering them—not letting them just slip by. Patrick Murray calls these “moments of transformation, embracing us with a profound sense that life is ultimately purposeful.”

We sense a holy connection. A friend happens to call just when we needed it. We turn on the radio and hear a musical piece that brings back pleasant memories of a time we heard it when we were with a loved one or dear friend. We feel peace. There are moments like that every day if we just step out of our routine to be aware of them.

At our food pantry I usually stand in a certain place inside and talk to those coming by for food. Today we came a little late and there were people sitting outside already, just waiting for the bags filled with their orders. For some reason, I decided to go outside and greet people there. Suddenly I saw a friend I had worked with for thirty-three years, who had just lost her job. We hugged and she told me about her struggles finding another job. I saw courage and faith as I have never seen before. She had a plan and was not giving up, and she still felt very cared for by a loving God. For me, this was synchronicity—that we ran into each other and could support each other just for a few moments.

I will put this visit in the memory book of my imagination and hope to remember to be on the lookout each day for times like this—when the Holy calls us and offers to us an opportunity to share the Christ in each other.

[See Patrick Murray, “Jung’s Concept of Synchronicity,” The Haden Institute, December 2002.]

Joanna joannaseibeibert.com