Stolen Disciplines

I'm really bad a Spiritual Disciplines - those things you do regularly, repeatedly, which help you connect to God. I don't seem to recall any being taught to us growing up. We got the usual "prayer & Bible study" stuff, but never really anything else.

Which is perhaps why I find them both fascinating and frustration. Fascinating, in that I think I'd like to have some kind of routine discipline to help me keep focussed. Frustrating, because I mostly don't know where to begin.

And then I saw this at Rachelle's blog, and COMPLETELY stole the idea for our God-time this weekend! (Sorry Rachelle... :) ) She comes up with the most awesome stuff and inspires me regularly. The Prayer Chain her daughter made is only one example that she's passed on some good stuff to them too.

So during our shopping on Friday, my son and I chose beads and then on Sabbath spent time making our own Prayer Chains and learning the prayer that accompanies them.

Which got me thinking about a whole pile of other prayers that I could make chains for. If you write out the prayers and put them in a locket at the end, you could keep them handy until they're in your brain! Prayers like "God be in my head, and in my understanding...", or the Lord's Prayer (which, to my horror, my son says he doesn't know. Bad, bad parent!), or the Serenity Prayer - appropriate for this particular blog.

Beads being as pricey as they are, we won't get around to them all at once, but I may give it a shot. I've got my Prayer Chain here, and although it has yet to garner a vocal reaction, I've seen people eyeing it. They're probably thinking "rosary" and "what's she up to THIS time?"... :)

Here are the chains we made. The colourful one is my son's (with a rather pricey stained-glass cross on the end), mine is the purple and gold/silver one.