Colorful Prayer

During a staff retreat last week, one of our colleagues spent an afternoon teaching us to pray in color. I must admit that I had earlier seen that topic on the agenda through whatever color of lens skepticism superimposes.

I once had a rich, full, wordy, time-consuming prayer life. I still pray a fair amount throughout the day, but these are short little things compared to the hours I once spent every day on my knees in my bedroom or at a kneeler in some chapel on a college or seminary campus. In recent years, I have struggled to carve out daily time for focused prayer. When I do, it is most often contemplative, rooted in deep breathing and physical and spiritual postures that open me to the presence of God. Brief readings from the Bible usually lead me into this prayer time (Moravian Daily Texts) and a prayer word or phrase focuses my meandering mind. Otherwise, prayer for me is most often wordless silence that is more like listening for and to God coupled with trust that God is also listening for and to me and the various aches and concerns of my own and those of others that I carry in my being.

I must admit that I have agonized over this change in my prayer habits. I was taught in late adolescence that prayer is about speech and specificity: we need to tell God what we need, what the world needs, what we have done wrong, what we are thankful for, and so on. I think someone once suggested to me that it was good to listen once in a while, but that was to be done mostly by reading the Bible; more words. Despite the myriad books I have read and the variegated forms of contemplative prayer I have tried over the intervening years, something about spending most of my prayer time in silence or, more accurately, finding my way toward silence, still doesn’t seem quite right, or enough, or faithful to my spiritual heritage. Yet, try as I might to do otherwise, this is the form of prayer that carries me into an awareness of God’s presence in the world these days.

So, when I saw “The Joy of Praying in Color” on the agenda, I was not convinced that whatever that was would work for me. In addition, the thought of some sort of coloring in the presence of other people – especially colleagues – also raised the rancor of “I can’t draw” anxieties that have been generously fed and indulged in over the years. Nevertheless, good team member that I am, I went to the session and opened my mired mind as far as I could.

As we arrived in the room Carol gave us each a half dozen colored markers and a thin tablet of drawing paper. Using a little book, Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth, and the experience of a workshop with its author, she then instructed us to use these simple tools to pray a favorite name for God. Immediately, one of the prayer phrases I use in contemplative prayer came to mind and I slowly reflected on that phrase in reference to the colors I rolled over each other in my hand. Before long, unskilled artist that I am, I found myself doodling/drawing. And when Carol dinged a little Zen bell and told us to stop, I could not put down the markers.


The process was almost immediately prayerful for me! As we moved through other ways to “color” our prayers (e.g. praying for others, praying Bible passages), I found myself – despite myself – caught up in a form of prayer that is a sort of hybrid between the deeply silent contemplative prayer to which I have become accustomed and the more focused, worded prayers of my younger days. I was reminded of the monks I read about decades ago who wove baskets of reeds as they prayed. Something about the meditation focused on a person or situation or story found its way into my hands and, through pen put to paper in abstract and vaguely symbolic colored form, became an experience of the presence of God for the world and for me.

Color me purple with surprise and aqua with gratitude for this addition to my prayer repertoire!

Thanks, Carol!

Hope

We have a couple of bird feeders just off the deck on the back of our house. They attract a variety of birds, house finches, sparrows, cowbirds, mourning doves, cardinals, blue jays, and, once or twice, a woodpecker. A Cooper’s Hawk has even perched itself on the fence at the back of our suburban yard for an entire afternoon in hope of taking a bite or two out of the bird population we attract. Far and away, however, the crowd at the table we set is dominated by goldfinches, floating flicks of chattering black and gold jostling for a chance to slip their tiny little beaks into slim slits and gobble thousands of minute black thistle seeds.

Adjacent to the bird feeders is a rather decrepit, barely recognizable dogwood tree. We keep talking about putting it out of its misery and replacing it with something more vibrant and attractive, but the birds love it. They use it as both resting place and launching pad. The branches also provide a place to catch up on the latest avian gossip while the birds await their turn at the busy feeders. They actually fight a lot with each other over the limited seating at the feeders. I’ve thought about issuing teeny little light-up pagers in an attempt to bring some peaceful order to our busy bird restaurant. For now, in the corner of our deck, near the tree and feeders, is a small bubbling water fountain. We enjoy the sound and sight of it; for the birds it is a favorite watering hole and spa. This seems to take some of the heat off the wait for the feeders.

In the midst of a quiet Sunday afternoon given to frequent glimpses at the fluttering activity around the feeders, my wife and daughter together heard a small “crack” at the deck door window and looked up to see one of the restaurant regulars fall with an ever so slight “thunk” to the deck. A goldfinch lay face up, still as death.

My eleven year old daughter, Kira, ran to find me. We stood side by side looking through the glass at the little body on the deck. Maybe it’s just stunned and will get up in a moment, we said. Is its chest moving? We waited, held vigil, hoping the bird would rise and fly – or at least get up and wobble.

“I should probably scoop it up,” I said finally. “Wait,” Kira asked. “Such hopefulness,” I thought as she disappeared down the hall.

But it wasn’t hope, at least not the kind I assumed, that moved Kira to delay disposing of a possibly living bird. I would soon learn that it was a deeper, even biblical, hope requesting that I wait.

Moments later Kira reappeared with a shoebox and a scissors and planted herself in the study. I sat in my big red comfy chair and watched as dear Kira disassembled the shoe box and then skillfully reassembled it into a much smaller two-piece goldfinch-sized casket held together with purple staples and a good bit of TLC. On the carefully crafted cover she obscured the LA Gear logo with dark black script: Birdie II – Died of a Window – October 5, 2008. "Okay. Now," she said.

I grabbed a shovel from the garage and met Kira on the deck. The tiny body fit perfectly in the handcrafted casket. Kira lowered the lid, we walked around the outside rim of the deck, not more than 10 feet from the decrepit dogwood. I dug a hole and Kira placed the box.

“Do you want to say anything?” I asked, dropping dirt back into the hole.

“Not really.”

“How about ‘Bye-bye, Birdie’?” I tried.

“That’s good."

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. [Matthew 10:29]

Hope.