'Annunciation', Filippino Lippi
It is hard to believe that a prayer diary has been in existence for almost two years. When I started, I wrote, “This blog is my attempt to respond to the question, “What is prayer?”
Since then, needless to say, my faith has deepened and my purpose and hopes for this blog have broadened, although the prayer question will forever remain central. Today, however, as I look out from my cottage by the sea, I express my intention as follows: to offer prayerful ways for all of us as God’s people to witness to the Truth, to experience Christ in our lives and to see the Christ in the faces of the people we meet.
It is in that spirit that I am adding a new section to a prayer diary, which I am entitling Word and Image. Let me explain.
I keep a daily calendar of scripture. During my morning prayer time I write down a Biblical verse that resonates with me, and then throughout the day I do my best to think about it and to pray with it. As the year goes on I consider to whom I will give the calendar, and at the end of December I wrap it up and include a note, suggesting that when the right times comes, the recipient might pass it on to someone else.
I’ve been doing this for about fifteen years, giving the first one to my mom. When she died I gave her calendar to her minister, who, just about a year after, passed it on to a grieving couple she knew. Maybe at the opportune time they will place it in someone else’s hands, but I don’t need to know. The recipients of several other calendars have died, and although I wonder what has become of their calendars, I trust that they are just where the ought to be.
Lately I’ve added another ritual to my morning prayer, praying with a piece of art, as an icon, I might say. Usually it’s a painting, but sometimes it’s a piece of sculpture, tapestry, pottery, photography, architecture (I’m open to new possibilities). I select from the treasure trove of postcards that I have acquired through my travels, but I am branching out to books, museums and the internet. My favorite subject is the Annunciation, but again, ‘What else might be out there?’
This new section to a prayer diary offers these two rituals, scripture and visual art, Word and Image. I make no attempt to related the two (as I do in my daily quote and blog entries) and yet, sometimes that will happen, for as we know God works in mysterious ways.
Since then, needless to say, my faith has deepened and my purpose and hopes for this blog have broadened, although the prayer question will forever remain central. Today, however, as I look out from my cottage by the sea, I express my intention as follows: to offer prayerful ways for all of us as God’s people to witness to the Truth, to experience Christ in our lives and to see the Christ in the faces of the people we meet.
It is in that spirit that I am adding a new section to a prayer diary, which I am entitling Word and Image. Let me explain.
I keep a daily calendar of scripture. During my morning prayer time I write down a Biblical verse that resonates with me, and then throughout the day I do my best to think about it and to pray with it. As the year goes on I consider to whom I will give the calendar, and at the end of December I wrap it up and include a note, suggesting that when the right times comes, the recipient might pass it on to someone else.
I’ve been doing this for about fifteen years, giving the first one to my mom. When she died I gave her calendar to her minister, who, just about a year after, passed it on to a grieving couple she knew. Maybe at the opportune time they will place it in someone else’s hands, but I don’t need to know. The recipients of several other calendars have died, and although I wonder what has become of their calendars, I trust that they are just where the ought to be.
Lately I’ve added another ritual to my morning prayer, praying with a piece of art, as an icon, I might say. Usually it’s a painting, but sometimes it’s a piece of sculpture, tapestry, pottery, photography, architecture (I’m open to new possibilities). I select from the treasure trove of postcards that I have acquired through my travels, but I am branching out to books, museums and the internet. My favorite subject is the Annunciation, but again, ‘What else might be out there?’
This new section to a prayer diary offers these two rituals, scripture and visual art, Word and Image. I make no attempt to related the two (as I do in my daily quote and blog entries) and yet, sometimes that will happen, for as we know God works in mysterious ways.
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