Monday, March 24, 2014

Teach us to pray 17

Creative prayer

God the Creator made us in his image according to the Book of Genesis (Gen 1.26). That means that we are creative too. It is a characteristic of human beings from our earliest history, when our ancestors drew on cave walls or made statues of beings that had never existed, except in their imagination. You might not think of yourself as creative - many people were put off at school by feeling that their attempts at creativity were being judged and found wanting, or that they just couldn't produce finished work that looked as good as that of their friends or teachers.
But if we stop worrying about "getting it right" we can all discover the joy of being creative.
Creativity takes many forms. You can draw, paint, sew, knit, make things out of wood or metal or paper, you can compose a song or write a poem or plant a garden or just arrange some things you like in a way that pleases you...

This week I will be encouraging you to try your hand at some creative activities. None of them are complicated or difficult, and no one will judge what you have made. Some activities might come more naturally to you than others, but try them all. As with all the other prayer suggestions in this series of Lenten blog posts, the hope is that somewhere in all of this you will find some new ways of praying that help you to come into God's presence.

Here is the first suggestion

The colour of prayer

Print out a mandala - a circular pattern - and colour it in.

http://100creativeideas.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/25-mandala-coloring-pages.html
You can find the same mandala on a doc. here 

Don't think about it too much, just colour as you want to.
As you do so, be aware of what you are thinking and feeling.

Allow yourself to talk to God, as if he was sitting beside you as you colour.

When you have finished, look at the colours you have chosen.
Why those?
What does the finished work remind you of? What mood does
it seem to capture?

You might like to draw your own mandala, or make a pattern with doodles and colour that in too...

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