This Lent we have been meeting weekly to explore different aspects of prayer. We have looked at Praying with Visuals (icons, art, architecture etc); Praying with Scripture; Praying the Rosary; Contemplative Prayer; and finally last night we looked at Writing and Colouring Prayer.
We used resources from Sheila Julian Merryweather’s book Colourful Prayer which I found last year when I was on a course. After we’d explored writing our prayers in a journal, the unsent letter, and keeping a note of prayers and stuff we liked, we looked at how to pray when ‘words are inadequate’. I am a doodler. There! I’ve said it. When I’m on the phone I can’t stop creating little scribbles on my notepad by the phone. According to this book, doodling is good. But you can doodle for God. But this involves using colour to express your emotions.
Strangely enough, and I find this hard to believe, the author does not like the colour purple. How can this be? But she loves Orange and it is her colour for joy. I’ve never liked orange so to each her own. Last night we looked at developing our own Colour Code by choosing the first colour that came to mind when we thought of certain emotions like: anger (we had reds, blacks and blue); pleased (we had blue, yellow and pink); anxiety (we had pink, red, blue); and peacefulness (lots of green, blue and pink). It was really interesting to see who different everyone saw the colours.
We’ve all been sent home to find our own colours for the following… (How do you see them?)
Depressed
Afraid
Anxious
Angry
Lonely/Sad
Disappointed
Peaceful
Thankful
Hopeful
Trusting
Loving
Joyful
RevRuth's Rantings 