Coloring as Spiritual Practice

This morning the kids shared another Children's Ministry Moment in worship -- a group speech followed by passing around baskets of crayons to everyone in the pews. We also included the image below as an insert in the bulletin with the heading:

MEDITATE. CREATE. LET YOUR SPIRIT PLAY.

This Lent, we tried different spiritual practices.

[Some of the kids] taught us a body prayer that their class does in Sunday school. There's a pose for each line of the prayer.

And Kimberley showed us how to be mindful of our breathing. We breathed in God's goodness and we breathed out fear, sadness, and anger.

But our favorite spiritual practice is the one that came most naturally to us: coloring! Did you know coloring is a spiritual practice for people of all ages?

Coloring can improve focus, reduce stress and anxiety, and provide a means of self-expression beyond words. Mandalas are particularly good for meditation because symmetry and repetition center the mind and spirit.

Many Christians and people of traditions around the world design and color mandalas. Today, there's one in your bulletin for you to color during worship and take home with you.

We've got crayons for everyone, too. So go ahead and color. Not that you need it, but you have our permission!

Black and Blue

Source

How strange we are when judging color 

so angry
about black or white.
Doesn't matter
if it is a dress or human flesh.

See the dress,
one snapshot.
Decide.
No, you already have.

Is it a trick of the light or years of learning how to see the world?

Over the senseless noise

the voices of wisdom 

with sense of human things

point to the truth,

teach you how you see

(remind you if you knew and just forgot the facts

in the fleeting moment you were asked

to make a color judgment).

To see black and blue, your eyes must filter light 

that is too strong.

Sometimes our color bias is so strong we can't filter the light,

can't see anything but white

and the gold that goes with it.

See the child,

one split-second.

Decide.

No, you already have.

See again with new eyes, new sense of how you see.

Do you filter darkness

through a preference for light?

You insist on innocence. It isn't

that you think darkness doesn't exist,

but like a person pushed aside in haste

you just
didn't see it there.

Or you did see darkness

and even though it was unarmed

somehow it scared you.

You insist until you convince others
to see things your way
not to see the black and blue.

Did you know we can see the world differently?

And if it's possible to teach ourselves to see
the same dress in a new color scheme
then it's possible to teach ourselves to see
the schemes of color bias.
Filter the too-white world through eyes that know better
and see the bruises on colored bodies.
See the black and blue.

---

Written by Kimberley Fais on 2/26/15, the 3rd anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death

God Is the Child in the Backseat of the Car

Source

When I first met Frog Girl, she was old enough to be in Girl Scouts and young enough to need to ride in the backseat of the car.

As we drove, we talked.

At times I lived vicariously through her, seeing the world anew through her eyes as she navigated school and extracurriculars and a family and a social life.

And at times her questions and insights forced me to reflect on my own life - past, present, and future - in a way that I hadn't anticipated. She talked to me like I was Someone Who's Gone Before, like I had wisdom to impart, but so many of her ideas encouraged me, entertained me, and made me appreciate being alive.

While I waited for her to finish gymnastics or swimming, I would sit and muse about whatever wise, witty, funny, wonderful things she had said so far that day.

When I had a pen handy, I wrote them down. I did the best I could to capture her words and the inflections of her voice on a scrap of paper that couldn't do her justice.

Sometimes she'd said so many clever, quotable witticisms that day that I knew I was forgetting some of them.

One day during my time working with this family, I thought back on my experiences of God - and, more specifically, my experiences of the silence of God. I had been struggling to make sense of a dark night of the soul that defied easy explanations. At first I'd known little except that it was somehow part of my journey.

Maybe, I thought, God is not so unlike the child in the backseat of the car who surprises me day after day with her interest in my life and her sense of humor and her thought-provoking lens.

When there are lulls in our conversation, the silence is still companionable. Just another part of our travels. No less real or appreciated.

And besides, it gives me a chance to savor all the gems I want to remember.