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Sacred
Imagination
February 2002 Column &
Gallery |
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by Dana Reynolds |
Each
month, Dana Reynolds shares her life-transforming
thoughts, ideas, and sacred imagination based around our
"theme of the month." Dana is a visionary Spiritual Midwife, who
devotes herself to helping women birth their creative
gifts into the world.
The Crafting of Relationship
Creative visualization is a powerful process.
However, it takes more than visualizing to create and
invite change in one’s life. Positive, constructive,
action and an attitude of optimistic confident
perseverance, combined with prayer and gratitude, are
also necessary ingredients for drawing forth the desires
and needs of the heart.
In a relationship, creating a unified vision of what
is desired to benefit and enrich the life of the
individual partners, and also the relationship itself,
can be a very powerful process. This month I would like
to share with you some suggestions for ways to co-create
your "Relationship Visual Prayer" with your
partner. I’d like to share a personal story with you
to illustrate this concept.
When we turned the calendar to begin the New Year, my
husband and I decided that we would take our New Years’
resolutions and create a collage to express what we were
desiring to do and to manifest in the coming months. We
spent an afternoon making our individual collages to
serve as a visual reminder to our commitments to our
personal goals. Later we shared them with one another,
finally placing them on our desks to help keep us on
track and focused.
In the week that followed, our personal visual
prayers proved to be such very powerful icons that we
decided the following weekend to work on a co-creative
collage to create a visual prayer to our
marriage/relationship. Here’s the process we created.
Please feel free to elaborate these ideas to fit your
particular relationship and creative inspiration.
We began by turning off the TV and getting quiet. We
lit a candle and sat quietly for a while meditating on
our life together. Then each of us took time to
individually write a list of things we would like to
change, enhance, or begin as a couple. Think of this as
a wish list. For example, my husband wants us to take
more weekend getaways to nearby places of interest. I
would like for us to take a continuing education class
together to learn more about a topic that is intriguing
to both of us. Both of us wrote independently that we
want to create opportunities to be with our children and
granddaughter as often as possible. After our lists were
complete we shared them, and as we talked, we came up
with a few more ideas that we believed would improve and
deepen our relationship.
When we had discussed our lists, we gathered some
magazines, scissors, and glue sticks and moved to the
table in my workspace where we could settle in for a
couple of hours to create our relationship visual
prayer. Visual prayer is a visual representation of
intention. This may take the form of a collage, an
altar, a painting, sculpture, or arrangement of
touchstones created with a specific intention for
healing, manifestation, or blessing. Intention is at the
heart of the creation of a visual prayer.
Don and I intended to create a collage to visually
portray not only our love for one another, but also the
various attunements we desire to make to our
relationship in the coming year. For an hour we each cut
and tore images that held meaning for us from the stack
of magazines.
When we had gathered a nice pile of clippings we used
an 8 ½" x 11" piece of cardboard for the
backing of the collage and we worked together, selecting
and placing the various images to form our visual
prayer. The process itself stimulated more conversation
about our relationship and also led to a lot of laughter
when we discovered we had clipped some identical images.
Everything came together in a matter of minutes, as
though we were simply acting as the hands of our
relationship, as if the relationship itself had energy
of its own. We carefully glued the pieces in place...
our visual prayer felt complete. The next day we took it
to our local copy shop and reduced the collage by fifty
percent on the color copy machine, making two copies. We
placed each copy in a small plastic frame and now they
rest on our desks next to our individual visual prayers.
These icons are constant reminders to stay focused
and to take time for those things that we have deemed
important to the health and well being of our individual
bodies, minds, and spirits, and also the spirit of our
relationship. Perhaps on Valentine’s Day you and your
beloved would like to create your Relationship Visual
Prayer.
We placed the original collage for our relationship
on our marriage altar. In our bedroom we have a table
that serves as a devotional-offering place for our
relationship. A heart-shaped silver bowl holds a
collection of heart touchstones we have collected
together. There are also meaningful poems for
inspiration and photographs depicting us throughout our
thirty-eight years together.
Above the altar is a shrine that hangs on the wall.
It is made of aged tin and has a small glass door that
opens to a small inner compartment. At the back of the
compartment is our wedding invitation and a photograph
of us as newlyweds. Standing against the photo is a
rolled paper cylinder tied with a white satin ribbon,
this is our marriage contract that we created together
several years ago following a stormy period in our
marriage. Our original wedding rings are tied together
and placed alongside our contract. We choose new rings
when we renewed our vows and made our new contract.
A relationship/marriage altar or shrine should change
and evolve just as the relationship changes and evolves.
Changing the arrangement of touchstones, placing fresh
flowers on the altar, adding a new treasure or tokens
for your beloved makes this sacred place a living
breathing expression of your love and commitment to one
another.
For those who may not currently be in a relationship,
but are desiring to attract their partner or soul-mate,
you can create a relationship visual prayer or altar by
including those things you hope to share and experience
with your future beloved. This process can help you to
discover what the truth of your heart’s desire truly
is.
February is the month of hearts and the expression of
love. Open your heart and pour love into all of your
relationships this month and let that love grow and
spill into next month and the next and the next and the
next...
You are
invited to submit your story and accompanying
photos to be considered as a feature for the Sacred
Imagination column. E-mail me at dana@sacredimagination.com
for details.
Copyright© 2002 Dana
Reynolds.
Read
Dana's Past "Sacred Imagination" Columns:
January
2002 - "Meditating with the Higher Self"
December
2001 - "The Prayer Cord"
November
2001 - "Explore, Express, Imagine"
October
2001 - "Seeking Sacred Alchemy"
September
2001 - "Invoking Your Muse"
August
2001 - "The Blessings of Daily Bread"
July
2001 - "Entertaining the Dream Visitor"
May
2001 - "Embracing the Whole:
Choices for Conscious Living"
April
2001 "Nourishing the Souls of the Children"
March
2001 "Opening the Senses to Beauty"
February
2001 "The Eyes of Love"
January
2001 "Patterns of Authenticity"
December
2000 "Finding Peace in the Fields of Time"
November
2000 "Cultivating Gratitude: Heart-Hugs and Prayer
Leaves"
October
2000 "Journey to the Center - The Sacred Mystery of
the Labyrinth"
September
2000 "The Heart and Craft of Healing"
August
2000 "Transforming Life’s Challenges into Beauty and Story"
July
2000 "Sacred Spaces Invite the
Muses of the Soul"
Read
Dana's Soulful Living Feature Articles:
Visual
Prayers
Intuition
and the Sacred Imagination: The Dance of Co-creation
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.
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