At the beginning of August I flew to Arizona to attend a Prayer Retreat and lead a workshop. My sister-in-law, Janet, is the women's pastor at her church and she asked if I would be willing to come to their prayer retreat and teach a bit about using art as a form of prayer.
We met at Living Waters Retreat Center outside of Sedona, Arizona. It was beautiful!
One of my passions is helping people get in touch with their creative side. I truely believe that we are all creative on some level, we just have to figure out where and how to tap into that creativity. When we do, we live a much happier, more balanced life. And, after all, God is the Great Creator and since we are made in His image...we are meant to be creative!
The 4 days I spent in Arizona were challenging and wonderful at the same time. For a while now I have been playing with the idea of pursuing my art full time and doing more things like this workshop. It was amazing to spend a whole weekend in prayer and to be so convicted by God that yes, this is what I am meant to do and He will walk with me on this journey!
For my workshop, the ladies all brought their prayer journals and we provided markers and crayons for each of them. It was wonderful to share my passion for art and how it can be used as a very powerful form of prayer.
We did some fun warm-up exercises to loosen everyone up and get started making marks.
Then we did some different prayer exercises - praying for people and praying scripture.
It was so beautiful to see these women hard at work, opening themselves up to something new and watching God move.
One of our exercises was what I call a "fingerprint prayer". We were focusing on how each one of us is unique, one-of-a-kind just like our fingerprint and spending time with God hearing what He might want to say to us personally.
So much of art, for me, is about the process of doing it....NOT the end product. It's about spending time focusing on something and what we can learn about ourselves, our world and our God when we are quiet and still enough to sit, create and listen.
When we are working with our hands and using our creative brain we are actually able to access a deeper part of our selves, our soul and our emotions. You can learn a lot when your working with your hands!
We also made prayer rocks. These are some of the ones that were made. It was neat how everyone made their individual prayer rock but then to see them all together, it was like seeing the groups collective prayer. Everyone pulled out their cameras and phones to take a picture of this.
We ended the afternoon with a time of reflection for people to share what "praying in color" was like for them.
It was such a blessing to hear how powerful this exercise was. A lot of people said that it was freeing - they have never felt such freedom and safety in their prayer life. Others were amazed at the deep connections they made about people or circumstances in their life that they had never realized.
It was a wonderful experience for me and I hope to continue on this journey of helping people "Add Color to Their Life!"
My prayer is that this passion/idea will continue to grow and opportunities for me to work with people on connecting with their creative self will arise!
Here is to the future and this new adventure!!
We met at Living Waters Retreat Center outside of Sedona, Arizona. It was beautiful!
One of my passions is helping people get in touch with their creative side. I truely believe that we are all creative on some level, we just have to figure out where and how to tap into that creativity. When we do, we live a much happier, more balanced life. And, after all, God is the Great Creator and since we are made in His image...we are meant to be creative!
The 4 days I spent in Arizona were challenging and wonderful at the same time. For a while now I have been playing with the idea of pursuing my art full time and doing more things like this workshop. It was amazing to spend a whole weekend in prayer and to be so convicted by God that yes, this is what I am meant to do and He will walk with me on this journey!
For my workshop, the ladies all brought their prayer journals and we provided markers and crayons for each of them. It was wonderful to share my passion for art and how it can be used as a very powerful form of prayer.
We did some fun warm-up exercises to loosen everyone up and get started making marks.
Then we did some different prayer exercises - praying for people and praying scripture.
It was so beautiful to see these women hard at work, opening themselves up to something new and watching God move.
One of our exercises was what I call a "fingerprint prayer". We were focusing on how each one of us is unique, one-of-a-kind just like our fingerprint and spending time with God hearing what He might want to say to us personally.
So much of art, for me, is about the process of doing it....NOT the end product. It's about spending time focusing on something and what we can learn about ourselves, our world and our God when we are quiet and still enough to sit, create and listen.
When we are working with our hands and using our creative brain we are actually able to access a deeper part of our selves, our soul and our emotions. You can learn a lot when your working with your hands!
We also made prayer rocks. These are some of the ones that were made. It was neat how everyone made their individual prayer rock but then to see them all together, it was like seeing the groups collective prayer. Everyone pulled out their cameras and phones to take a picture of this.
We ended the afternoon with a time of reflection for people to share what "praying in color" was like for them.
It was such a blessing to hear how powerful this exercise was. A lot of people said that it was freeing - they have never felt such freedom and safety in their prayer life. Others were amazed at the deep connections they made about people or circumstances in their life that they had never realized.
It was a wonderful experience for me and I hope to continue on this journey of helping people "Add Color to Their Life!"
My prayer is that this passion/idea will continue to grow and opportunities for me to work with people on connecting with their creative self will arise!
Here is to the future and this new adventure!!
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