(oops - wrote this yesterday and it didn't get posted!) Artistic Afternoons: Make a spring hunger collage. Grab some old magazines (or junk mail, or whatever you have access to). Before you begin looking through, put a hand on your chest and name that you are seeking to give shape to your hunger as a creative prayer today. Flip through the pages, noticing any image or word that seems to grab you in some way (even if you aren’t quite sure why, at first!). It may be a resonance you feel, or it may be dissonance between what you think you “should” be hungering for, and what is calling to you in the pages—in the images that bypass the logical, linear parts of the brain to access something that may even still be forming, taking shape as you pay attention. Once you have looked through a couple of magazines, or have a good pile of images and words to play around with, begin to arrange them. Don’t think too much about this part—let yourself intuitively put colors and textures in their places, and create juxtapositions you might not have come up with if you were rigidly controlling the process. Come to the practice with a sense of openness to whatever comes. When you have arranged them on your page, glue the pieces down (a glue stick works just fine). Then, sit with what you have just made. Notice what connections there are, that maybe you hadn’t even intended. Invite God to give you eyes to see whatever God is stirring in this imagery/process. What is it like to pray in this intuitive, embodied way, rather than perhaps the “usual” way of one word after another to form sentences and paragraphs of thought? What surprised you? What felt like it communicated something you didn’t quite have words for, in just the right way?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-03-24 14:48:20 UTC