Though the crafting practice has traveled with me many years, just last February I wrote about the contemplative craft (see “Handwork Contemplation”) and those thoughts have stuck with me as a fresh, counterintuitive way of personal growth.
So, the new craft I offer is even more direct than the “Tree Puzzle”. It addresses prayer as the contemplative practice and uses text in this craft. I hope it will facilitate your communion with God and help grow your personal fulfillment. I offer it in paper craft downloadable as “pdf” files, and as an on-screen coloring project with a “jpg” file, all described and photographed via our Crafts page.
Will of God Prayer – a contemplative craft
This is a way to incorporate your tactile and “making mind” with your spiritual contemplation. When you work with the coloring medium and cutting tools on the paper symbols, or with a digital coloring program for the screen version, you become aware of handling physical extensions of spiritual meanings. It is another way to experience the union of the Spirit with materiality, heaven with earth, God’s Will being done on earth.
When you have finished working the materials and you observe the assemblage set before you on a shelf or in your phone, the experience keeps working in your memory and speaking to your spirit for benefits you would not have gained otherwise. God has been present and active in the experience and now you have grown in communion with God.
Customize My Suggestions
The words I chose for this object are not meant to be closed or absolute statements. They are offered as starting points for your own thoughts, meditations, and prayer in your own words between you and God. Think of this as a facilitating piece like a bookmark in your communion with God. I hope you will personalize it and maybe even write notes to yourself on the display.
You do not have to feel the same way I did when I designed this assemblage. Each person who works this project has their own unique experience in doing so. You could even trace the cutout onto your own card and put your own words on it. Each person brings their own combination of knowledge and viewpoint to the work and customizes the symbols with their own choice of colors, texture, and style. But, by engaging in it, we connect with each other through the shared, physicalized symbols of spiritual reality.
We’re Each a Vessel of Unique Inspiration
I share the symbols inspired in my spirit and others relate to the inspiration by handling the symbols. Their own inspiration interacts with mine. It is a kind of conversation beyond location and time, a spiritual communion with each other and God. Spiritual connection with others could be enhanced by sharing a picture of your finished assemblage on social media.
As I said last February, “Perhaps we would call this project creatio divina, or spiritual creating. Although historically creatio divina was taught as the contemplation of the natural world, the insight that we are creators in the image of God expands the term to apply to our creative action. The crafting activity I send you can have spiritual effect when you allow yourself the time, space, and attitude to appreciate, yes, even love your true inner self being active in the world.”
This throws light upon such activities as meditating upon scripture and performing rituals passed down to us from people long past. To be sure, the physical objects are not the spiritual reality. But they assist us to transcend physical limits and commune “in spirit and truth” as Jesus said (John 4).
I hope to see your rendition of this craft someday.
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