Introducing or re-introducing imaging as a prayer practice

I’d like to share a recent prayer experience with you that may help to describe the process as a way of introducing or re-introducing imaging as a prayer practice.

First there was a quote from Einstein that I had read recently that was playing in my head and was calling me to further reflection.  I meditated on the quote,“The field is the sole governing principle of the particle”  and drew the mandala.

I began the mandala with the quote and then I began the imaging.  As you can see, I drew two very simple but very different fields.  The words from the quote that really captured me and inspired the mandala were:  field, sole, particle.  As I drew and as I reflected these words seem to morph into three other words very important to my spiritual life:   Christ, soul, person/self.

I started by drawing flowers and leaves, which I always like to draw.  I began with the “good” field so they were bright and happy and healthy.  Then I added the juxtaposition of the “ugly” flowers, dull, dreary and dying.  It appears to be two different days, but the same field.  It’s not the flowers on their own that make them good or ugly however, but the field fully participates in the status of the flower.  The field, being the fullness of the natural world in which the flowers are, contributes sun and rain and soil, etc.

My reflection very quickly led me to this.  So it goes the same for natural/agricultural life as it goes for the spiritual life.  Our spiritual life is not isolated, nor controlled.

Our spiritual life is a communal event of the Christ (more commonly referred to as the Body of Christ), our deepest self and the manner in which we live our life.

So as it goes for the flowers, is the same for my soul, myself.

This mandala is simple as they are meant to be.  I continue to remind myself that this is a spiritual practice, not a work of art.  Most importantly it spoke to me.  The process of creating it opened the space within me so that I could connect to the Divine message for me that day.

It spoke to me of dependence in a good way, in the Body of Christ kind of way.  It also spoke to me of humility.  I can’t “take credit” for my developing spiritual life.  Or, I can take credit, but only as a participant in “the field.”

I wonder if Einstein was attempting to bridge the scientific with the spiritual when he wrote this little sentence.  Or maybe after he wrote this scientific statement, he realized a further meaning for himself.

It is important to note that the mandala is not showing different flowers, only different moments in time.  For flowers and for humans, time is an important element of our development.

On this day, I didn’t know why exactly but I wanted to shut the world out.  I did not want to participate in the larger field.  I was home on my medical leave from work.  I had done a few chores around the house before sitting down for this prayer time. I wanted to pull in the immensity of my field.  Yet I realized this wasn’t possible.

As I sat in prayer that day, feeling happily apart and closed in from the world beyond my prayer space, I knew that even here in this intimate moment, the field of my life experience was right there.  There is no reflection I can have or response to prayer without the influence of the field, the Christ.