As Your Hands Do

Artist's Prayer by Marcy Tilton

(Holy)Spirit, grant me:
The vision and wisdom of the elder she-eagle
The fierce focus of the lioness
The fluid leadership of wild geese
Small creatures’ ways of stillness
Beaver’s strong and beautiful cozy lodge
The devotion of a dearly beloved loyal dog.

Fill my spirit with the wild abandon-infused
winds of autumn that keep positive and
negative space moving and changing,
charged and clear.
Fill my inner circle with Beloved in the
form of lover, partner, true friends, family,
truth and laughter.

May my work reflect the light and the
shadows that are my being.
May I have clarity.
May I know when and where to begin and
when and how to stop.
May I always have the strength to ask the
hard question,
to peer deeply into the dark pools,
the patience to wait for sediment to clear.


This gem of a prayer was in a devotional I was reading today.
She had me with her desire to be filled with the "wild abandon-infused winds of autumn that keep positive and negative space moving and changing, charged and clear." I stretched up on tiptoes inside and inhaled that one, letting it fill every unused musty corner of me.

Lord, breathe upon brushes, fill inkpots, sharpen pencils; light bright fires between brain cells, call to thoughts and intentions, speak to the dough in the pan, mortar the spices. Let something of beauty come out...let it come out of us!

Let us have faith in our giftedness, the manifestation of Your own creative ability straining against what is common. Let us see clearly, hear the melody and tie on our tap shoes! Let it all be for you and through you by our free hands and hearts and wills. Love and art as you first saw it, uncorrupted and glad-faced. Art in story or clay, paint or pasta, in colored paper draped for birthdays and cards homemade and fragrant. Guitar strings calling. Flutes answering. Art for sale or art for-keeps. Your breath on embers, our heats on fire, offering.

Wild-hearted gifts. Gifts from quiet places. Gifts that render this world transparent. (Some of us have the Sistine Chapel to lay at His feet. Others the love of showing a child how to draw a stem on a flower. It is great love that determines the value. There is not a one of us ungifted.) May our hands do as Your hands do that this world may know the beauty we live in You.

The heavens are sounding the glory of God; the arch of the sky makes clear the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1


What is the inspiration infused Holy-Wind showing you?




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