Praying in Color
It's a book; it's a prayer practice; it's a workshop!

The Book
Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God by Sybil MacBeth introduces the active, visual prayer practice the author calls "praying in color." The book provides a little bit of memoir and theology and a lot of how-to. Step-by step instructions in Chapter 3 introduce "praying in color" as a way to do intercessory prayer. Additional chapters explain how the practice can be applied to learning Scripture, keeping Advent and Lent, practicing lectio divina, and praying in other ways.

I didn't set out to write a book. I just had a new way to pray that worked for me. With some hesitancy I showed my prayer journal to a friend I trusted. She said, "You're going to write a book." It was the permission I didn't dare give myself. When I started to write, I felt such joy and ease. It was one of those rare times when I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

Reviews
Library Journal May 1, 2007
Dancer and mathematics instructor MacBeth's charming book may be the first to combine the pleasures of doodling with a discussion of, among other things, lectio divina. Here, she shows how simple drawings-often hardly more than circles and lines with names or ideas or places sketched in and enlivened with color-can focus the praying heart, making prayer something better than a shopping list or a chore and helping the praying believer to carry the wishes and thoughts of the prayer through the day. MacBeth's book is not for unbelievers or those who do not pray; it is directed to those suffering something more like spiritual attention deficit disorder. Still, it is one of the most appealing books on prayer to appear in the last five years. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly January 31, 2007
Starred Review. Just as Julia Cameron, in The Artist's Way, showed the hardened Harvard businessman he had a creative artist lurking within, MacBeth makes it astonishingly clear that anyone with a box of colors and some paper can have a conversation with God. Frustrated by a laundry list of what she calls "prayer dilemmas," and the unfortunate situations of more than half a dozen friends and family members on her "critical prayer list," MacBeth, a math professor by trade, spent an afternoon doodling before she realized she'd in fact spent the afternoon in prayer. As she takes particular care to emphasize, this method most effective for intercessory prayer, but adaptable for other approaches requires absolutely no skill, merely a desire to connect with God. (Readers should therefore ignore any lingering self-doubt planted by a first grade art teacher.) Amid gentle personal anecdotes, MacBeth illustrates each step of the process, providing not just instruction but inspiration by sharing her own prayer pages as well as those of her students. She even includes a chapter on using one's computer for the process. Readers of all ages, experience and religions will find this a fresh, invigorating and even exhilarating way to spend time with themselves and their Creator.