L
littlequestion
Guest
This came up in another thread but I thought it is a good topic on its own. Prayer is a quiet time for most of us and a time to review our walk with God as well as to place our problems before Him, but often we don’t pray much because we are too easily distracted or we have a hard time allowing ourselves to be quiet for any amoung of time.
Active prayer, such as the Rosary, helps because there is something (the beads, the lists of mysteries, etc) to focus our senses along with our thoughts, but there are some other active methods for praying, too. Any daily task can be offered up as a prayer.
With Lent coming up, it might be a good time to explore a new penitential prayer activity. Pulling together some old clothes and cutting them up to make quilt patches is a good penance. Choose to do it to a garment you still like to wear, for example.
You can listen to prayer on a cd or from a website while you sew, or you can recite the prayers. When I do a sewing prayer activity I don’t use the machine. I hand-stitch because it allows me to sit quietly while I do it, and I usually do one patch at a sitting.
Other activities could include whittling figures out of balsa wood for a creche or even a stations-of-the-cross (if you are really ambitious.
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Clay, papier-mache, collage: all these things lend themselves to this type of prayerful penance without requiring a great deal of artistic skill. You don’t have to intend to keep the items or show them to anyone. If you make a quilt you can donate it to a shelter as part of the penance, for example.
Or you could do something like walk up to the next panhandler you see and ask him to lunch with you. Go into the nearest sandwich shop and sit and talk with him while you both eat. It’ll do more for both of you than just handing him a couple of dollars.
Open each activity with a sign of the cross and a prayer of offering and close it the same way.
Active prayer, such as the Rosary, helps because there is something (the beads, the lists of mysteries, etc) to focus our senses along with our thoughts, but there are some other active methods for praying, too. Any daily task can be offered up as a prayer.
With Lent coming up, it might be a good time to explore a new penitential prayer activity. Pulling together some old clothes and cutting them up to make quilt patches is a good penance. Choose to do it to a garment you still like to wear, for example.
You can listen to prayer on a cd or from a website while you sew, or you can recite the prayers. When I do a sewing prayer activity I don’t use the machine. I hand-stitch because it allows me to sit quietly while I do it, and I usually do one patch at a sitting.
Other activities could include whittling figures out of balsa wood for a creche or even a stations-of-the-cross (if you are really ambitious.
)Clay, papier-mache, collage: all these things lend themselves to this type of prayerful penance without requiring a great deal of artistic skill. You don’t have to intend to keep the items or show them to anyone. If you make a quilt you can donate it to a shelter as part of the penance, for example.
Or you could do something like walk up to the next panhandler you see and ask him to lunch with you. Go into the nearest sandwich shop and sit and talk with him while you both eat. It’ll do more for both of you than just handing him a couple of dollars.
Open each activity with a sign of the cross and a prayer of offering and close it the same way.
