Monthly Meditations for 2014...

   As I promised, here is a link below to my monthly meditations for 2014.  I've made them into a little desktop calendar.  You can order one of these calendars by going to this link but feel free to download the images and print them for yourself.  You won't have the calendar but you will have the meditation prompts.  All of the images, with the exception of the butterfly which is from my home garden in Maine, were made in Ireland.   You can see the original post I did on the idea of monthly meditations here... 

   Perhaps you will consider gathering your own images this year and adding thoughtful phrases to them.  Think about creating a small book of the images or simply  mounting them on foam core and displaying them on your desk or beside a chair on a little easel.

   A friend of mine order several calendars to give as gifts to her more contemplative friends and these are the instructions I added to the back of the calendars I sent her:

Each month you are given an idea to think about for that month. 

Journal your responses to the presented idea over the coming month.

Do it slowly and carefully and let your ideas evolve over the entire month. 

At the end of the month, write down your final response on the back of each card. 

You will have a diary of your thoughts during the year that you can keep.

 

   You can do the same.  Print out the images and then, at month's end, write your final response on the back.  You could use one of my hand-made book ideas to turn the twelve images into a finished book.  Anyway you chose to use the twelve images, I hope you have a wonderful year of quiet reflection!

  

Monthly Meditations for 2014

Monthly Meditations...

   I love to have some image and text to mull over as I sit with my coffee in the morning.  This year I've created 5 X 7 cards to insert into a plexiglass holder that I keep near to hand.  I change them every month or when the spirit or circumstance moves me.  I use my own images but you could use any image the suits you and the text can be a poem or any bit of writing that stimulates your contemplative frame of mind.  The monthly meditation in this photograph was the one I used in December.  It has a lovely writing about faith and I needed it sorely as I tried to process the horror of the Connecticut shootings and, for me, the equally hard to digest news that the shootings had spawned an unprecedented wave of new gun purchases. I found this especially ironic and terribly sad in this season in which so many of us celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

    I've always found the end of one year and the beginning of another a hopeful time and despite the past few months I have continued this tradition.  The past, although particularly difficult this year, is past and, being an unabashed optimist, I see the future as a place of possibilities.  We may never fully get over the tragedies of 2012 - the families affected in Newtown and those families still struggling to overcome the disaster of Hurricane Sandy - but we can, together, move slowly through it. I can't help but remember the sight of the children of Newtown being let out of the school after the shooting. They kept their eyes closed and the hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them...completely trusting.

    This is the card I have on my end table right now.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chilliest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickinson

Consider creating your own monthly meditations this year!