The Art of Blue Tape Spirituality

"I'm still a wordy woman. But my prayers are no longer wordy. In fact, there are barely any words to them at all. How do I then pray?

I pray with art, with images and color that reflect out loud the embers that still burn in my bones. I pray with paint, and glue, and scraps of paper that I collage together. Quiet time. This is my best time to do art.

When my father died this past summer I went to a local art store and filled up a bag with supplies. Before we had even buried him an art piece flowed out of me. Grief, prayed out with images rather than words.

I had another crisis, an emotional crisis earlier this summer. It caught me off guard. An incident tore an old scab off a hidden hurt and I bled all over the carpet. In times past I would have headed for the basement and prayed it all out to my father in heaven. Instead, I grabbed my art box, a glass of wine, and sat at my table, collaging images and phrases of grace and beauty. It has now become one of my favorite art pieces, a vivid prayer that hangs on the wall of my bedroom. It is a living prayer that has yet to be amen'ed.

How do I pray? I listen to the Blues, and sing. I sing my prayers along with Mavis and Ted and Muddy. I hum and harmonize, prayer boiling over like a kettle of simmering black-eyed peas.

I danced my prayers this week. A friend invited me to a concert in a nearby park. A dozen of us swirled and twirled in time to the guitars. I jazzed up my Pentecostal two-step and became lost in the magic of the sound. Prayers throbbed through my bare feet into the earth. The trees and the sky watched me, the dancing prayer warrior, as I slew dragons of grief and despair.

I do not know how to pray anymore. I do not know how to stay locked in my basement, alone with loud words and ghosts, unholy or otherwise. My prayers now have life, have purpose. Like blue tape, the tape I keep in my art drawer for using whenever and however. Prayer is no longer confined to words or places in my life. It is whenever and however. It is like blue tape."
by Pam Hogeweide