Last week I drew a prayer by rubbing leaves and making a space for the names of people on my prayer list. This week I grabbed the last handful of leaves on our Japanese maple and traced around them. Artistic skill is not a necessity for a visual prayer practice!
So this is my leafy, intercessory prayer list. I’m praying for birthdays, healing, discernment, joy, work, freedom…. The drawing will sit on my desk and remind me to pray for each person.
Drawing/Tracing: Sybil MacBeth
I continue to think about the quote from yesterday’s blog: ”You can either be right or happy.”
Is there a chance I can be both right and happy? With some tweaking of the definition of right, perhaps both things are possible. Twelve-step programs talk about being “right-sized.” I understand this concept to mean having an accurate assessment of myself –not over-inflated or under-rated. I know my place as one of the 6.8 billion unique, beloved children of God. When I am right with myself which I get by being right with God, I feel less need to be right in the sense of superiority.
Jesus healed a man possessed by many demons. When I am right-sized and right with God, I, like the demoniac, feel as if I have been purged of my “unclean spirit” and returned to my “right mind.” (Mark 5, KJV) What a happy way to live–maybe even the right way–at least for me.
“You can either be right or happy.” I’ve heard this quote a dozen times.
Being right can mean a lot of things. It can mean I know the best way to raise children, to cook the perfect spaghetti sauce, to be a good Christian, to fold a toothpaste tube…. It can mean I know the accurate facts about a situation. If I didn’t think I was right, wouldn’t I change my actions or my thoughts? But the catch for me is: If I’m right, are you wrong if we disagree? And even if I think you’re wrong is it my “right” to correct you?
Always being right and having the last word of correctness has its delicious, perverse satisfaction. When my husband tells some friends, “On January 5th we went to Seattle,” I can employ my superior memory and correct him–”No it was January 6th.” I get to feel very smart for about four seconds. But the glory of accuracy is short-lived. I’ve made the facts more important than the story he tells. I have put him down in front of others. The rift in relationship is hardly worth four seconds of glory.
Being happy may be a more difficult choice. Real happiness is not a moment-to-moment emotion. It ’s an approach to life based on a faithful, hopeful attitude of gratitude and wonder. My need to be right is often counter to the desire for happiness–though I’m under the illusion of happy= right.
My real happiness allows for others to have their say–to tell their story, to hold their own opinions, to have the last word or the best story, and even to make mistakes. My happiness may even be dependent on not correcting others or supplying them with unwanted information, advice, or opinions. It might just be dependent on respecting and listening to their words and the real possibility of my not being right.
My parents were pack rats. My dad was the original recycler. He never threw away a thing. There were a hundred egg cartons in the basement, bags of paper clips in his top drawer, and a closet full of paper and plastic bags. My mother never threw away a dress, a coat, or a piece of jewelry. I have alternately applauded and denounced their practices.
Without their saving and collecting habits, I never could have afforded the houseful of furniture I have; so I’m grateful. But then there’s the Royal Doulton figurines and flowery, china bowls for which I have no use or affection. When I try to get rid of them, I hear my mother’s voice saying, “You’ll appreciate these some day.” I doubt it, but it’s hard to defy the mother-voice inside of me.
One of their hand-me-downs I really do like is an assortment of small, clear turquoise vases. I love to fill them with flowers or cuttings from my yard or my next-door neighbor’s yard. Right now there are summer zinnias and marigolds still hanging out in the garden. Some big, yellow, autumn flowers with brown centers bloomed a couple of weeks ago. The winter holly berries grow redder by the day. So on my dining room table (my parents’ table, of course) in the little turquoise vases is a wonderful confluence of seasons–summer, fall, and winter.
Whenever I think of seasons, I can’t help but think of the passage from Ecclesiastes. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance….” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 NIV)
The flowers on my table are from different seasons and how beautiful they are. My worshiping community is another place where I get to see a beautiful confluence of seasons. We in the church are all in different seasons of our lives, our belief, our work, our growth, our mourning, our healing, our dance….How rich and wonderful it is to have so many seasons represented together. How boring it would be if we were all seasonally alike.
Photo: Sybil MacBeth
A moment of childhood, autumnal nostalgia this weekend gave me a leaf-rubbing prayer. With different kinds of leaves and colored pencils (crayons work too), I prayed for my friends and enjoyed the beauty of the earth.
Drawing: Sybil MacBeth
Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God combines memoir with theology. Step-by step instructions introduce the practice of praying in color as a way to do intercessory prayer.
© 2009. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
