A Beautiful Morning for Painting

Yesterday I had my first adventure with Prayer as Creativity, ok first official adventure with prayer as creativity.  I set aside a few hours on a beautiful sunny morning to spend some time with God and to paint. 

The sun was streaming in the windows, I had a steaming cup of tea, my painting supplies and my favorite meditation partner, Max the cat.

I decided to look at the Psalm for this coming Sunday (Psalm 146) as my grounding point but the gentle breeze coming in through my window kept bringing me to Psalm 148 as well.  Both these Psalms joyfully praise God for all that God has done and created and given.

And so, I painted and after about an hour of reading, meditating and painting this is what found its way out onto the canvas...

And now today, it is time to reflect on what took place in that hour and since then.
During that hour my internal dialogue started off sounding something like "what should I paint?  Should I paint what I hear in the scripture or my deepest darkest prayer?  How do I start?  What color do I start with?  Big brush or little?  Why does an umbrella keep popping into my head?"  And so on, until finally I just told myself to shut up and started, slowly and deliberate and cautiously but I started and it took every ounce of my being to shut myself up, stop worrying if it would be good or not and just paint.  And as I painted and the minutes ticked on it got easier and even the umbrella found a place in my gem of a painting.

When I first finished it, I knew it was what I had set out to paint, I knew that it was my prayer to God but I wasn't entirely sure why.  So the more time I've spent with it and the more I listen to how I have been feeling the more I see what my prayer really was.  Lately, blame it on pregnancy hormones, changing weather or any number of other things, I have been frustrated by the cloud of negativity and doubt and general grumpiness that seems to find its way into my day.  I have been desiring the clouds to break so that I can more fully feel the joys in my life, the joys God has given me.  And this is what I painted, God's grace and love and joy and presence breaking through the clouds of negativity, doubt, pain and fear and not only breaking through these clouds but taking them over and burning them off as the sun burns off the fog in the mornings.  But what about the umbrella that so filled my thoughts?  Well, it's the world, the thing that was created to give us shelter and rest.  Not only does God break through the clouds into my life but He also breaks through the clouds that seem to blanket out world and brings us the promises that only He can bring.

So with this first painting, I got out of my own way and painted a deep prayer to God for renewal and joy without even realizing it.  It's really an amazing and strange experience to get out of your own way and tap into something unknown, unrealized and unspoken and bring it to life.  This makes me eager to continue down this road of prayer and creativity.