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Visual
Prayers
by Dana Reynolds |
It is the eve of a full moon in
autumn. Tomorrow night she will shine her brightest then
wane into her slender pose, no less important than her
fullness.
The leaf, now wearing the
glorious colors of fall’s paintbrush, will soon let go
of the familiar branch and with a spiral dance to earth
begin a transformation from radiant beauty into new
purpose and form. These two markings of time, gifted by
the moon and changing seasons, mirror my present
foothold on the mysterious labyrinth of life.
I too am nearing my fullness.
It is a moment in time, not unlike the hour before the
leaf separates from the tree, when everything is
vibrant, colorful, exquisite. Grace and fruition
co-exist.
Fifty-two calendar years spell
my age. The cells deep in the fibers of my psyche, body,
and soul whisper to me in ancient languages from the
place of dreams, "You are ageless. You carry your
story and the stories of women throughout time. Your
wisdom is sacred; it is women’s wisdom. Remember the
gifts you were given to share."
I believe this is a universal
message for the women of our generation. We are being
called to remember our gifts of creativity. We have the
potential to pour ecstatic beauty into our lives from
the ancient well of feminine knowing. Our creations will
reflect to others their unique creative gifts,
while offering them healing. Each exquisite gesture of
expression ignites another’s point of inspiration.
Sewing quilts and making spirit dolls, writing poetry,
forming collage from our prayers, creating altars as
places of devotion—we, with these sacred practices,
become our wise woman’s spiritual language.
As I sit in circles with women
coming of age, women who have gathered from various
places on the map, there is often a theme, a golden
thread, running through the shared stories. It is the
thread of remembering, the way the moon and the leaf
remember their purposes. We are remembering who we
are--a family of women experiencing the voices and
visions of a collective dream. This universal revelation
has a singular purpose. It is unmasked to each of us
according to our unique ways of understanding. The
strange repeated message composed of symbols, signs, and
urgings, is simply, "Remember your gifts and share
them with one another." It is through this
remembering that we grow wiser.
Collectively we are remembering,
both consciously and unconsciously, that we are
spiritual midwives. Each of us has the potential to
birth herself into the full expression of her creative
gifts and healing wisdom. This birth brings us to our
centers, to reclaim the knowledge we have been given to
share with others through our offerings of imagination
and inventiveness. Spiritual midwives are mentors,
healers, and artists. Through reflection, ritual, art
making, and journaling, we craft our stories into
tangible form and place them on the altars in the
centers of our circles. The spiritual midwife
incorporates beauty and sacredness into everyday living
for herself and for others.
Priscilla’s broken heart is
healing. She feels ready to beckon a new love
relationship into her life. With this intention she is
inspired to prayerfully choose touchstones and placement
for an altar to call forth passion and partnering. Her
choice of setting is atop an antique chest of drawers in
her bedroom. A postcard depicting a timeless Rodin
sculpture of two lovers entwined is her first offering.
The woman in the image reminds Priscilla of herself. She
places it in a gold frame to give it the importance it
deserves. A tiny crystal Rosary is tenderly hung on this
icon as a blessing of her intention to both embrace and
be embraced. Two pink roses, the color of the heart
chakra, are arranged in a small bud vase and placed
nearby. Pictures of the Blessed Mother from Mexico and
Russia invoke the Divine Feminine’s intercession for
her prayers. As a final gesture, Priscilla lights a
ylang ylang and patchouli-scented candle, representing
sensuality. Her altar is a visual prayer affirming that
love, passion, and meaningful relationship are being
invited to share her life and her healed open heart.
Eventually Priscilla’s gift of knowing how to arrange
furnishings with sacred intention leads her to begin a
new business. She now shares her intuitive understanding
to help others clear their living spaces to restore
tranquility to their lives. Order and flow are the
result.
Our natural world demonstrates
these principles. Nature stimulates our metaphorical
birthing process through our senses. The moon blesses us
with her light and her radiance awakens our dreams and
visions; the autumn leaves provide a palette of color
for our eyes. Their rustling song, accompanied by the
afternoon breeze, is the song of creation. Beauty and
inspiration thrive in the natural world, beckoning the
muse and providing fresh kindling for our creative
fires. Each new season and the ever-changing landscape
of the night sky offer gifts to stir and awaken our
creative imaginings.
Lee lovingly crafts a small
doll with a white clay face. She fashions a body made
from blue fabric printed with gold stars and moons and
carefully stuffs her with cotton batting and motherly
love. This visual prayer has been created for her young
daughter, Emily, to represent her mother’s devotion to
her. Lee is away on retreat and she will present it to
her when they’re reunited. Her visual prayer holds the
message that even when they are apart, they are
connected by their love.
Through my work as a
facilitator of women’s spiritual retreats, I have been
transported deep into mystery while witnessing women,
like Lee, as they birth their stories into tangible form
through sacred art making. These soulful creations are
actually visual prayers.
Visual prayers are born from
holy intention and devotional awareness in varied forms
of expression as imaginative and diverse as the
situations that call them forth. The remarkable women
who find themselves compelled to consciously create
altars, spirit dolls, collages, hand- made books and
journals, quilts, and wearable art, do not refer to
themselves as artists. Most of them have always felt
intimidated by the idea of making art. However, women
who are moving into the later years of life often are
infused with newfound courage. The old internal voices
that have been negating desires to be daring and
spontaneous are suddenly growing faint. A strong clear
voice emerges to encourage and guide with assurance.
This is the voice of the creative spirit.
One October afternoon Susan
receives guidance and inspiration from the depths of her
soul. She begins to choreograph a special winter’s
holiday experience for her parents, husband, and two
grown children. Her mother and father have been divorced
since she was a teenager and have remained close friends
throughout the years. Susan somehow senses time is
slipping away. Planning a reunion for the people she
loves most in the world becomes more than just a passing
thought. It is a clear calling. She finds the perfect
setting, a warmly furnished farmhouse in the Texas hill
country. In the days before the reunion, her own kitchen
becomes a place of transformation while she prepares all
the family’s favorite foods to take to the farmhouse.
Susan follows her intuitive guidance and creates
countless special touches. Holiday decorations,
meaningful music, creative surprises--everything is
perfection. It is an unforgettable time blessed with
laughter and celebration.
When they return home Susan
looses herself in artistic alchemy. She lovingly makes
hand made memory books for her mother and father filled
with photographs and quotes from their cherished
holiday.
Soon after this sacred time her
father becomes ill. The little book of photos transforms
into a focal point on one of the many altars she creates
in his home while he is dying.
Five months after her father’s
death her mother follows. The country holiday that had
been a living visual prayer to Susan’s family is
suspended in time within the pages of her little memory
books. Her feminine gift of knowing this would be a
final joyful gathering called forth her gifts and she
delivered them with love and caring-- the same love and
caring she shared with her parents till the last.
Magic happens when a circle of
women tenderly places their stories of the heart, like
Susan’s, into the center. We midwife one another into
a discovery process that runs like a river carrying us
back to our authentic natures. There is dancing and mask
making. Prayer beads are strung as meditation. Tiny
Goddesses are made from rich red clay. Handcrafted paper
is folded into a book that is carefully rubber stamped
to tell a story without words. Flowers are woven into
garlands and crowns. Each creation inspires another’s
process of imagining and inventing.
Through our crafts we return to
the ancient wisdom, as our hands and hearts work in
unison to reveal the beauty and knowledge we have been
carrying within us all along. And so, one by one, we
tell our stories through our visual prayers. We make an
altar to honor a healed heart, stitch reassurance into a
spirit doll, craft a book of memories, or cut and paste
into a collage symbolic images filled with intention.
While on retreat in California,
Connie learns that her college-age son, at home in
Chicago, has severely broken his leg in a soccer
accident and will have surgery to repair it early the
next morning. Distance prevents her from getting home in
time, so she decides to stay for the remainder of the
retreat. In silence, she thoughtfully gathers her
materials and meticulously scissors her son’s image
from a photograph, pastes it in the center of a piece of
paper, and surrounds his likeness with pictures
symbolizing courage and healing, clipped from magazines.
The following day, our circle of women gathers before
dawn, while in Chicago David’s surgery begins. Connie
places her visual prayer in the center beside the
candle, and we pray in silence for David’s healing and
safe passage through the operation. That afternoon we
learn all is well and that he will recover completely.
One-year later Connie’s visual prayer graces the
family’s refrigerator, as a reminder of the healing
that continues to flow.
We make visual prayers for a
myriad of reasons. Opportunities to create touchstones
for others and for ourselves present themselves in many
ways. Sometimes the crafting becomes a co-creative
process.
My mother and I reconnect after
months of working through painful family issues. We are
inspired to make a quilt together to celebrate our
renewed relationship. I select assorted fabrics in
shades of purple, the color for healing. Later I gather
cherished photographs and other meaningful images and
transfer them to muslin, to be integrated into the
pattern. We decide the design should be a crazy quilt to
reflect our complicated journey.
My mother, an artist with
needle and thread, cuts the fabrics into random shapes
and pieces them like a puzzle into unified form. During
this collaborative process she moves to a new home, but
our project continues to sew our hearts together across
the miles. While she stitches, I gather ribbons, charms,
and tokens from my dresser drawer: a silver moon button
from a favorite dress, an ivory rose pin belonging to my
grandmother, a yellow silk pansy. I send these things
and other talismans to my mother. She touches them with
her special brand of quilt making magic.
Months later she arrives for a
visit carrying a shopping bag filled with sacred cargo,
wrapped carefully in tissue paper. Together, with ritual
and tears, we hang it in my prayer room. It is an
exquisite tapestry of love. On the back of the quilt my
mother made a small pocket from a fabric photo image of
us as a young mother with her little girl, and placed in
it her story of the quilt. The photo reminds me that I’m
now older than she was when the picture was taken. This
visual prayer presents me with the metaphor of how the
bits and pieces of our journeys, when pieced together
become a quilt of life, The thread binding it is made of
love and forgiveness.
Time has passed since I began
to put these thoughts to paper. The moon will be full
tonight. The afternoon breeze sends the autumn leaves
pirouetting to the ground. May we be reassured, by the
observation of these wonders, that we are also moving
towards fulfillment and completion.
Copyright
©2000 "Visual Prayers" is excerpted from Our
Turn, Our Time: Women Truly Coming of Age, Beyond Words
Publishing. Not to be used without permission.
1-800-284-9673.
For ten years, Dana Reynolds has
been facilitating women’s spiritual presentations and
retreats nationwide. Her work as a Spiritual Midwife,
one who assists women as they birth their creative gifts
into the world, is the foundation of all her endeavors.
Her background as a visual artist and writer enriches
her Spiritual Midwifery: Birthing the Feminine Soul
workshops.
As the creator of an art making
process known as visual prayer, Dana teaches
women how to combine ritual with sacred intention to
create altars, collages, spirit dolls, and other
touchstones. The creation of sacred spaces is also
paramount to the Spiritual Midwifery experience. Her
web-site http://www.sacredimagination.com
offers samplings of her visual prayer collages, poetry,
and a workshop catalogue.
Dana is the author of the
whimsical and colorfully illustrated book, Be An
Angel, a co-creation with illustrator and graphic
designer, Karen Blessen, (Simon & Schuster). Her
essay, Visual Prayers is included in the
anthology, Our Turn, Our Time: Women Coming of Age, edited
by Cynthia Black, (Beyond Words Publishing).
A trained labyrinth
facilitator, Dana incorporates the labyrinth and other
spiritual wisdom into her retreats and workshops. She
recently traveled to Chartres and Vezelay Cathedrals in
France to gather information pertaining to ancient
sacred mystical traditions. She currently lectures on
such topics as spiritual midwifery, sacred journal
keeping, feminine spiritual wisdom, and the early
Christian women saints and mystics.
Dana’s life follows the
spiral path from rim to center and back again. She looks
for the sacred in forgotten places and openly embraces
the great Mystery of life. Guiding women to the
discovery of their creative inner gifts is the passion
that fuels her soul.
Visit Dana's "Sacred
Imagination Column and Gallery" at
SoulfulLiving.com
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