Prayer Doodles - by SC Skillman
Recently I went on our church weekend away at the Pioneer Centre, Shropshire. We had a very engaging speaker with a dry sense of humour, Revd Steve Tilley. His subject was Hunger - Physical Hunger, Spiritual Hunger, Intellectual Hunger and Emotional Hunger.
Steve led four sessions, and at the end of each then invited us to move into "breakaway groups" to discuss the points he had raised.
However, we also had the opportunity to go to the creative area where there were art materials awaiting us and several creative ideas, allowing us to work in a less cerebral way with the ideas Steve was presenting to us. This was all provided for us for our resident creative muse, Marie Calvert.
I always feel there is only a certain amount of value in a group of people discussing something and after the first couple of sessions I felt it was definitely time to give up all the swapping of opinions, and go to the art area instead.
Whilst there I met a little girl who was drawing a picture of a rainbow, and had a lovely time. I chose to do Prayer Doodling.
Marie explained that the idea of this is to create your own squiggles, shapes and then colour them in as you pray for the person or situation concerned. You could create a different shape for each of them, and connect them up too if you are praying for several which are related to each other.
You could also use different colours to symbolise different things, e.g. yellow for God's light, red for God's love, blue for peace or healing, green for rest or nature, purple for God's comfort.... or make up your own. Marie emphasised that there are no rules for this. Do the prayer doodles slowly and prayerfully so they become your prayer.
Here are my prayer doodles:
Why not try it yourselves? Maybe you could work with your writing group, too, and your prayers could be for your lives as writers, and for the fruitfulness of your words in the world today.
SC Skillman
psychological, mystery and paranormal fiction and non-fiction
My next book 'Paranormal Warwickshire' will be published by Amberley Publishing on 15th June 2020.
Steve led four sessions, and at the end of each then invited us to move into "breakaway groups" to discuss the points he had raised.
However, we also had the opportunity to go to the creative area where there were art materials awaiting us and several creative ideas, allowing us to work in a less cerebral way with the ideas Steve was presenting to us. This was all provided for us for our resident creative muse, Marie Calvert.
I always feel there is only a certain amount of value in a group of people discussing something and after the first couple of sessions I felt it was definitely time to give up all the swapping of opinions, and go to the art area instead.
Whilst there I met a little girl who was drawing a picture of a rainbow, and had a lovely time. I chose to do Prayer Doodling.
Marie explained that the idea of this is to create your own squiggles, shapes and then colour them in as you pray for the person or situation concerned. You could create a different shape for each of them, and connect them up too if you are praying for several which are related to each other.
You could also use different colours to symbolise different things, e.g. yellow for God's light, red for God's love, blue for peace or healing, green for rest or nature, purple for God's comfort.... or make up your own. Marie emphasised that there are no rules for this. Do the prayer doodles slowly and prayerfully so they become your prayer.
Here are my prayer doodles:
Why not try it yourselves? Maybe you could work with your writing group, too, and your prayers could be for your lives as writers, and for the fruitfulness of your words in the world today.
SC Skillman
psychological, mystery and paranormal fiction and non-fiction
My next book 'Paranormal Warwickshire' will be published by Amberley Publishing on 15th June 2020.
That's no doodle! That's proper art! What a great idea, though. Another way to get your brain doing things differently and generate ideas.
ReplyDeleteYes the doodle doesn't have to be pretty. It can be a pile of knitting wool or spaghetti or a mass of dots and lines and squares and anything at all. I just go for curving lines and forms from nature and pretty designs. But it's a wonderful aid to prayer. We did it last night in our small group, with soft instrumental music in the background and there was such a prayerful, meditative atmosphere. a peaceful space in the middle of this frantic world.
DeleteI do echo Fran's point though - they are very handsome shapes, Sheila!
DeleteThank you!
DeleteI love this idea. I also love your doodles. My heavens, you are an artist
ReplyDeleteThank you Wendy!
DeleteThis is wonderful and a great idea! That’s why I find it so good to sometimes use my colouring Bibles, to concentrate on what I’ve read, to imagine what God is saying to me from a passage, and to pray for others and myself while colouring. As I don’t have artistic gifts of drawing or painting (like you!), this is a way of expressing thoughts and feelings in prayer while colouring the Bible verse on the page.
ReplyDeleteThank you Barbie, I hadn't heard of colouring Bibles but it sounds a perfect idea.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I think I may try this - an aid to concentration and focus, and I love the idea of connecting the shapes where the prayers are connected, and of using colours to represent certain things, such as aspects of God or subjects. I'll need a better quality notebook though, recycled lined won't work for this! Congrats on a really original blog subject!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad this idea appeals to you and you think you'll give it a go. Everyone's doodles are unique to them and also the symbolism of the colours may change as you work with them.
Delete