My yearly retreat this time exposed me to many different ways of praying, two of them involved art. You might like to try them.
Scribble Drawing
- Invite God to be with you as you work.
- In one continuous motion scribble, covering a paper and letting the lines overlap. Variations: Close your eyes or draw with your non-dominant hand.
- With a black marker trace over the lines you wish to keep. Color the shapes or designs. You might make heavy black lines to resemble a stained-glass window.
- Reflect on your artwork. What does it mean to you? Are the colors you used significant?
- Pray about your experience.
- When finished, gaze at your scribble until you see objects or a design formed by the lines. You might need to turn the paper in different positions.
In my art, I could make out burning incense and a heart as you see in the photo here. Obviously, the incense stood for my life, an offering of praise to God; and the heart represented God’s love for me and my love for God.
Coloring a Mandala
Videos on YouTube explain how to draw a mandala yourself. To save time, find a book or website that offers mandalas to color. Choose one and decide whether to use crayon, paints, or colored pencils or markers. You can work from the outside in or from the inside out. You can shade areas or blend two colors in one area.
As you color the mandala, pray in any way you choose. Or be silent and simply, relax, and listen for God’s voice. In coloring, you concentrate and focus on your thoughts. Pay attention to them: Are they happy or sad or angry? What are you imagining? Do the colors you choose mean anything? What do they tell about you?
Reiki
Currently I’m editing a book about reiki, a healing practice. One chapter deals with the role of art as healing therapy: chromotherapy. Colors influence our feelings. As a teacher I learned that cool colors like blue and green will help keep students calm, while hot colors like red and orange will make them antsy. Coloring lowers stress and promotes positive thoughts, so it benefits people who suffer from depression, anxiety, trauma.
Speaking of color, did you know that we humans can see 10 million different colors? Nevertheless, some creatures can detect more than that! Thank God for color!
Worthwhile Emails
Every day in my email inbox a wonderful post from “Christian Art” appears. It is produced by Fr. Patrick van der Vorst from the Diocese of Westminster, an art expert born in 1971 and ordained as a priest just last year. His emails offer the day’s Gospel with a reflection on it accompanied by a related piece of art with comments on it. The art ranges from classic to modern. I highly recommend signing up for this free service at https://christian.art. Recently, the Gospel included the line “Anyone who welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me.” The artwork featured was this charming one by Renoir, “Girl with a Watering Can.”
Here is a peaceful video for you that doesn’t explain how to color a mandala but shows one being colored:
