Learning to Pray Creatively...

I meant to post this last night after my safe arrival in Geneva, Switzerland to look after my niece and nephew for a week, but between jetlag, travel adventures and being the Aunty Dragon hug machine, I never got on my brother’s computer until this morning. Given all that has happened since Dad died, all that a few of my friends are facing and some of my travel experiences to get here, this felt like the right topic for today’s Inhaling Creativity.
Any weird typos will be because the y and z are reversed on this European keyboard... so do bear with me if I don’t catch them all.

Prayer comes in many forms for many different religions around the world. Certainly with the disaster in Haiti, many of us around the world are praying for other people in other places more than ever before. That is what intercessory prayer is all about.

INHALE What do you do when you don’t know what you are supposed to pray for? You just turn everything over to God. Praying about someone and for someone doesn’t have to be a bargain, a list of demands or wishes, a plea or even a formal prayer. All you have to do is hold that person, issue or concern in your innermost being and let it go...

EXHALE The next time that someone or something is weighing heavy on your heart, just try being creative in how you pray. I had to calm myself when the customs officer in London took a 3\4 filled bottle of lens solution because it COULD contain 120 ml (companies don’t make a smaller size yet) instead of 100 ml. After I got over the initial desire to pray for a bolt of lightning, I turned my creativity to prayer instead. Inhale, exhale. That’s becoming routine now in tough times as well as good ones. I hold a prayer in my heart and then imagine it as a butterfly, coloured bird or even a balloon... drifting up to Heaven. If we believe in a Creative God (and I have ever since I first saw a platypus) then why should our prayers not reflect that? Pray or praise with music, drawings or images. Write down your own prayers that move you or string one word after the other like worry beads to hold them in your heart; Peace... Healing... Love... Joy...Strength. Just take it one breath at a time.