The Art of the Hand-written Thank You Note

In a world where texting, tweeting and status updates make up much of our communication I decided to teach my son the art of the hand- written thank you note.  None of our family members need or even expect a thank you note, but after emerging from the sea of wrapping paper it’s nice to sit and reflect on what my son received this holiday season and remember who gave it to him.  The process of expressing gratitude through a written note is something that is good for him on multiple levels.  He gets to feel gratitude towards his family and translate that into words.  We talked about how to write a thank you note, starting with stating what the gift was and then including a nice detail about how he will use it or his favorite thing about the gift.  Since he is only four years old, I will have him dictate what he wants to say and write it for him.  He’ll have a chance to practice his writing skills too, he can write the person’s name at the top of the card and his own at the end.  

To keep his interest I like to set out some art supplies to choose from and let him be creative with how he puts the cards together.  If we are going to make a dozen cards he will get bored if each one is exactly the same.  We also work on these a little at a time over several days or a week.  I want him to have fun and not be overwhelmed with the project.  He is really interested in cutting, gluing and stamping these days so we took a trip to the craft store and picked out his favorite “Thank You” stamp from the store’s scrapbooking supply section.  I collected some supplies from around the house including:

·         card stock (8 ½” x 11” sheets cut in half and folded so you make two cards from each sheet)

·         envelopes (invitation sized 4 ¾” x 6 ½” (#6)

·         colored construction paper or scraps

·         markers & crayons

·         glue stick

·         stamps & stamp pads

·         glitter

·         white craft glue

·         qtips or glue brush

·         shoe box or Chinese takeout boxes

·         stickers (we decide on a limit for each card, maybe 3 or 5 stickers –without a limit he will stick stickers until they are gone and every inch on the card is plastered.  This is a good time to practice counting!)

A Tip For Using Glitter:

If your child is into glitter (and what preschooler isn’t?!) try using a lidded box for applying glitter.  Glitter has a way of getting everywhere, but I have found this process to be helpful in keeping it mostly contained.  Have the child put glue where he or she wants the glitter, using a q-tip or a cheap brush dedicated to gluing projects.  Once the glue is in place, put the card in a lidded box.  The child can sprinkle glitter on it and then put the lid on and shake the box back and forth.  If it’s a small project you can also use a Chinese food take out container with a clear lid and watch the glitter shake around.  When you remove the paper shake the extra off into that same box. 

Have fun making each card unique!  Your family members will especially love getting a card with their name scrawled across the top in precious preschool handwriting!

Time out for Tea & Truffles

“…rest leads to peace, peace leads to clarity, and clarity leads to creativity.” –Kirk Byron Jones

This year, my husband took my son to a local chocolate shop, and picked up a sample of artisanal chocolates for me for Christmas.  They were pretty pricey so when I opened them he suggested that I take my time and be sure to really enjoy them.  “Make a cup of tea and have one truffle after putting the boys to bed.”  Unfortunately just sitting and enjoying a cup of tea is more of a novelty than the norm for most parents.  We live with a never ending to-do list hanging over our heads.  At the end of each long day I put the boys to bed and have just enough energy to finish doing the dishes, check off a few tasks that are nearly impossible to do when the boys are awake and fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.  We also live in a society where busy-ness is something bragged about and used to prove your worth. 

“It's not easy to rest in a world that sometimes seems to despise it.” - Kirk Byron Jones in a Baccalaureate address that was delivered at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2009.

I just finished reading a book called “In Praise of Slowness” where author Carl Honre explores the ways in which our society’s obsession with speed is affecting every aspect of our lives.  It takes its toll on our ability to be creative too.  When my son was three he would hum songs that he’d made up.  He informed his grandfather that he made up the songs while he slept and then during the day he sang them to see if they were any good.  I see insight into the creative process through how my then three-year-old described how his mind worked.  Our creative process suffers when we are hurried and tired. 

As we enter a new year most of us reflect on our lives and resolve to make changes.  This year I want to continue to be more mindful of making space and time to find rest in my days, in order to be ready to let more creative energy in.  Whether it be a cup of tea and a truffle, or putting aside a half hour to read, taking a bubble bath or lighting a candle and just sitting down to be still.  I wish you a refreshed Happy New Year and a heart filled with creativity!

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Session 4: Feeling Gratitude Towards God

This week, as we come closer to Christmas Day, we put our focus on feeling gratitude towards God.  We challenged ourselves to harness the feeling of gratitude with God at the center of our meditation and used the following scriptures for inspiration.

original drawing by M. Estes Zywar

Ephesians 5:19
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,

Mark 12:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Colossians 3:16
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

The breath prayers derived from these scriptures were to inhale on “Seek the Lord” or “Love the Lord” and exhale on “with all your heart” or “Sing and make music” on the inhale and “from your heart to the Lord” on the exhale.

For our stretching portion of the class, Kris Cross led us in a relaxation process called constructive rest position.  During this time we practiced a method of relaxation where we focused on different parts of the body and relaxed our muscles with the help of a metaphor, visualizing our bodies as a sac of sand.  As we focused on each muscle group we imagined the sand pouring out of the sac and the sac collapsing.   

Our closing prayer for this week:

Dear Lord, as we celebrate Christmas we remember what you have done for us and give thanks for all your good gifts.  We pray that our hearts would be full of praise to you.  Lord, let the light that you have put in our hearts shine for the world to see as a testimony to your love and grace.  May we celebrate fully this Christmas as we sing to you with gratitude in our hearts.  -Amen

original drawing by Brookye Keeney

I hope this workshop was a blessing to those who participated and that it helped you take time to breathe, focus on the joys of this season, find gratitude in your lives and sing to God with gratitude in your hearts!  Merry Christmas!

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Session 3: Meditate on Gratitude

Today, after spending two weeks being mindful about our breath and refocusing on joy, we considered the impact of gratitude on our time in meditation and also on our physiological and spiritual wellbeing.  The self care workshop, that inspired me to create the Attitude of Gratitude Workshop, introduced me to idea of starting meditation from the heart.  Clearing the mind of distraction can be a daunting task, but starting from the heart and focusing on a place or person whom you personally feel gratitude for can be a helpful way to enter into a meditative place that will help you quiet your mind.  The image of your heart pumping the feeling of gratitude to every cell in your body, nurturing it and filling it with gratitude for the places and people you are grateful for was helpful to me.  The leader in the workshop I took had us place our hand over our heart and if, while we were meditating on gratitude, our minds wandered away from that focus we could give ourselves a physical cue by gently tapping our chest to bring our mind back to that feeling of gratitude. 

One coloring page I supplied for my workshop was a silhouette of a person with outstretched arms (a visual image of a person expressing feelings of gratitude).  The rest of the paper left room for you to draw something that reminds you of a place or a person you personally feel grateful for. 

The Bible passages I chose this week were:

Proverbs 17:22

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Proverbs 27:9
Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice.

Proverbs 27:19
As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart.

The breath prayer we used today was “A heart at peace” on the inhale and “gives life to the body” on the exhale.  Or “A cheerful heart” on the inhale and “Is good medicine” on the exhale.

I hope this week you can continue to breathe, focus on joy, and find peace in meditating on gratitude.

We closed our time together with the following prayer:

Dear Lord, as we take time to look inward, into our hearts, may we find peace, love and true joy.  May our hearts be filled with gratitude for those you have put in our path.  We pray that this gratitude would overflow, nurturing each cell in our body and reflect in our lives each day so that we might in turn be a blessing to those around us. - Amen

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Workshop Session 2: Focus on Joy!

For our second week of our Attitude of Gratitude Workshop we challenged ourselves to focus on the joys of the season rather than the stress.  One suggestion for doing this was to make two lists in your journal.  The first listing the things that cause you stress and the second things that bring you joy.  Our hope is that throughout Advent we can spend less time focusing on the stressful things and spend more energy on the joyous.  One person took a different take on this list making exercise.  She wrote things that cause her stress in the first column and then in the second, how to deal with that stress.  This was a great approach and a reminder that the journal is personal.  The theme of refocusing is a jumping off point so express it in a way that is most effective and meaningful to you!  If writing a list is not your style feel free to express your list visually.

The Bible passages used for refocusing dealt mainly with reminding us of Christ which is why we are celebrating to begin with. 

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Matthew 1:23
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

Psalm 62:1
 ¹ Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.

The breath prayer used this week was:  “Immanuel” on the inhale and  “God with us” on the exhale.

I hope your journal continues to be a reminder to breathe this season, take time stretch your muscles to relieve tension and focus on what brings you joy!

Our Closing Prayer:

Lord, as we go through this advent season preparing to celebrate Christmas, help us to see you and the true purpose of this season.  Prepare our hearts and clear our minds so that we might not be distracted and discouraged by the noise and busyness.  Let us find joy in this season to celebrate fully with our friends and family. –Amen

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Workshop Session1 Remember to Breathe!

Original drawing by M. Estes Zywar

A yoga teacher once told me, “If you change the way you breathe you will change the way you feel.”  It is so true.  When I’m stressed I don’t even notice that I’m taking shallow breaths or holding my breath altogether.  But when I am conscience of breathing in a relaxed, even manner it changes how my body holds tension.  I become conscience of my breathing and notice my muscles in my shoulders are tight and I can work on relaxing them.  I breathe and notice my stomach is tied up in a knot and I can release the tension.  Stress has such a physiological effect on our bodies and breathing is a great way to start paying attention. 

For the first part of my four week Attitude of Gratitude Workshop leading up to Christmas I want to start with being mindful of how we breathe.  I started by looking up breathe in the Bible starting with Genesis 2:7 –

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 

Breath is found in Psalm 150:6 –

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.  Praise the LORD. 

 And again in John 20:21-22 - 

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you!  As the Father sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” 

I pasted these verses in my Gratitude Journal. 

I wrote “Breathe” in my journal and doodled around the word while thinking about how I was breathing and working on releasing tension I was holding onto.  There is actually a process for meditative doodling that is called zendoodling or zentangle.  It can be used as a tool for finding a calm state where your mind can be released from stresses and worries and you just focus on the repetitive pen strokes.  My  mother told me about this tool for meditation which she used during her long wait at the airport when traveling to see her father after he had suffered a stroke.  My mother and I also made up some coloring pages for my workshop that people could paste into their journals and color with crayons.  Remember coloring with crayons when you were a kid?  Have you tried it lately?  It can be very relaxing too!

After spending some time in our journals I introduced my group to the idea of a breathe prayer.  It is a concept that has been around for a long time and my husband uses it as a tool for meditation and prayer with parishioners who go on weekly prayer walks in our community.  You take a phrase and repeat it quietly to yourself as you breathe in and breathe out.  For example the most ancient is “Lord Christ Jesus” on the inhale and “Have Mercy on Me” on the exhale.   One that I liked this week was “Be Still” on the inhale and “know that I am God” on the exhale.   Our group warmed up by walking and practicing these breathe prayers before doing a series of stretches led by a professional  dance instructor who is a member of our congregation.

In closing we said the following prayer together.  I hope that everyone participating in our workshop will open their Gratitude Journal this week and be reminded to breathe this holiday season!

Lord, you breathed life into each and every one of us.  Help us not to take it for granted, but rejoice in it; for each breath is a gift. 
Help us to continue to breathe during this season
as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. 
May we breathe in the sweetness of the Holy Spirit
and exhale tension and stress
Teach us to breathe in the Holy Spirit that we might praise you with each breath. 

-Amen

Art Journaling: Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude this Holiday Season

I’ve noticed during yoga classes that my teacher often directs the students in clearing their minds and focusing on gratitude.  It intrigued me, but I didn’t feel like I really understood why.  I just tucked it in the back of my mind.  Then early this fall I went on a retreat where I attended a workshop.  The person leading the group did an exercise in meditation that focused on the heart rather than on clearing the mind of distraction.  She had us focus on feelings of gratitude to push feelings of anxiety out of the body.  She created a relaxed atmosphere, and then had us imagine that feeling of gratitude being pumped throughout the body and into each cell of our being.  It was incredible how harnessing that feeling of gratitude, even gratitude for something very small, could impact how we felt both physically and emotionally.  Early in November I had an opportunity to make an art journal and do some meditation exercises using visual artmaking.  After these experiences it seemed like everywhere I looked I saw references to the physical effects of cultivating feelings of gratitude.  I kept stumbling on magazine articles that encouraged listing things you are grateful for as you fall asleep at night, writing notes of gratitude, and the simple act of verbally saying “thank you”.  I found research on positive psychology interesting, but also thought that if there are this many articles written about the “pursuit of happiness” clearly it is something that our society is craving. 

Our frantic pace and overwhelming list of obligations are magnified during the holidays.  I love Christmas but find that the joy can quickly be blotted out by the endless pressures of fulfilling the material expectations of the season.  I knew that a friend at my church, who is a dance professor, was interested in teaching a class on stretching and decided to invite her to combine our talents and offer a class to our congregation during Advent.  So we came up with, “The Attitude of Gratitude Workshop: gentle spiritual and physical activities to refresh your weary soul this Advent season.”  I plan to write a blog entry each Sunday night with some of the journaling activities, prayers and ideas to meditate on.  Our hope is that it will give people tools for maintaining a calm, joyful mindset so that the most wonderful time of the year won’t leave us physically worn out and our souls weary.

Directions for making a gratitude journal

Materials:

• 10 sheets of card stock
• scrap of fabric approximately 9”x14”
• ruler
• pencil
• 4 clothes pins
• an awl
• rubber mallet
• magazine or scrap wood
• heavy thread or crochet thread
• large embroidery needle
• 1 large button

Instructions:

1.       Fold 10 sheets of card stock in half and stack inside one another to create a book.

2.       Measure one inch from the top, one inch from the bottom and the center of the fold.  Marking with a pencil.

3.       Line up the fabric cover so it matches up with the edge of the left side of the cardstock (when the cardstock is unfolded and there is an extra couple inches of fabric along the right hand edge.)

4.       Hold the papers and cover together by securing with the clothes pins.

5.       Using the awl poke three holes along the spine of the book where you measured. (if you have a rubber mallet or hammer you can use it to pound the awl through the layers of cardstock and fabric.  Use the scrap wood or thick magazine to protect your work surface.

6.       Cut 2 ½ - 3 feet of thread.

7.       Sew the spine of the book by starting from the outside of the fabric cover through the center hole back out the top hole, in the bottom hole and then back through the center hole from the inside of the book to the outside.  Leave a tail long enough to stretch across the width of the cover and extending a couple of inches. 

8.       Sew the button to the flap extending from the back cover so that you can close the journal securely by wrapping the tail of the thread around the button.