Prayer, both the practice and the concept of it, has been a rather fluid thing in my life. It has changed and morphed along the way as I have grown. What has "worked" for me has been different just as I have grown to be different. One thing has stayed consistent, though. And that is my desire to be nearer to the Divine.
I so desire to be near my Beloved. Near to my Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Now and forever. But I find that this nearness, or perhaps the awareness of this nearness, is not always easy to foster. I allow my mind to run away with the endless chatter of my internal dialogue. I get distracted in my prayers, going off on small details of what the day or week ahead will hold. Sometimes, if I try praying at night, I even fall asleep mid-sentence.
This can be wildly frustrating. It would be understandable if I were new to prayer, but I've been doing this for a long time. I have both an undergraduate degree and Master's degree in ministry and theology. I live in a convent. There is seemingly no reason why prayer should not be second nature for me. And yet the reality is that it is difficult.
So what can I do? How can I pray?
Perhaps prayer doesn't have to be sitting with my head bowed and eyes closed. Perhaps it doesn't have involve my hands folded and still. Perhaps I can do something different in my attempts to be nearer to my Beloved.
Making art has been a mode of prayer that I never expected to find. The picture above is the first of many to come throughout the month of October to illustrate how real people have used creative means to foster a rich and diverse prayer life. The stained glass piece above is one of the first art projects I ever did where the realization began to sink in that I could pray and meditate even while my hands were busy in creative ways.
It is certainly not a conventional way of praying. It is not what we picture when we imagine a person at prayer. But I have found that making art is one of the more helpful prayer practices in which I can engage.
My painting has been my most enjoyable and fruitful attempts and creative prayer. When I pull a blank canvas from my stash and set it on my easel, I think of the immense possibility of creating. And the many possibilities that I have while I partner with God in creatively becoming the woman I will someday be. While I mix colors on my palate I think of how my own "mixing up" in life has helped me to create some new and colorful realities through God's help. As I lay in my background colors and, as Bob Ross would say, make "little criss-cross strokes" with my brush across the canvas, I think of myself as a new creation in Christ. How I have so much color and vibrancy even in the background of my consciousness. When I pull my painter's knife out and lay snow on to mountain sides, I think of how lightly and softly God has held me throughout the years, allowing the most gentle of caresses to pass over my heart.
Throughout this meditation and prayerful remembrance, I slowly reach a place of peace within my soul. I find such wonderful joy in front of a canvas, a kind of happiness that transcends the action of painting. My painting isn't perfect. Sometimes it's not very pretty. Sometimes it turns into a muddled mess as I over-mix my colors or don't quite move my brush in the right way. But I have come to realize that, for me, there is no such thing as "bad" art. Sure, some are objectively better in dimension or color, but I have come to a place of realizing that I don't paint for that purpose. I don't paint to be "good" at it. I paint to pray. I paint to allow my hands and mind to focus on a singular task, and in doing so I am opened up to a greater and more Divine reality.
You don't have to paint to pray. I have found many a way to creatively pray. Sometimes I string beads together to make Anglican rosaries. Sometimes I crochet. Sometimes I cook. Sometimes I write. There are so, so many ways in which we can prayerfully engage with some aspect of creativity.
So I encourage you to pray. However you can best commune with the Divine, I encourage you to do that. If you need to engage your hands, please don't feel ashamed or that you are "doing it wrong." I believe that God enjoys and finds pleasure in even our most feeble feeling attempts at communion. I believe that God is always near to us, wanting desperately to draw us close, and prayer is a way of opening ourselves up to that nearness. However you find that awareness, it is good.
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