Monday, October 15, 2012

The color of prayer

photo © Genesis+Art Studio
HOLDEN VILLAGE, CHELAN, WASHINGTON, USA. It’s been almost two years since we began the World Canvas Project at Luther Seminary and have watched it grow beyond what we initially imagined. We have participated with communities around the globe and experienced groups beginning their own canvas to take it out into the world. We have witnessed the heart’s of many praying with color, shape and form to turn suffering into community, conflict into creative energy and for the strength to hold tension for the common good. This past summer, the World Canvas Project made its way up Lake Chelan to Holden Village. We were strangers to one another at the onset, but creating together we revealed what we have in common, generated new possibilities for growth in our minds and hearts. In every prayer lifted up, we wove threads of grace together to form a fabric of hope. With the mind, heart and hands we created something together that none of us could have created alone, lifting up prayers for the healing of the earth and for one another. We will return to this sacred place and to the friendships made. Until then we offer this prayer from the book, Earth Prayers:

We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land
To restore the waters
To refresh the air

We join with the earth and with each other.

To celebrate the seas
To rejoice in the sunlight
To sing the song of the stars

We join with the earth and with each other.

To create the human community
To promote justice and peace
To remember our children

We join with the earth and with each other.

We join together as many and diverse expressions
    of one loving mystery: for the healing of the
    earth and the renewal of all life.