Prayerful and Mindful Poems to Contemplate

  

Contemplating spiritual passages while knitting encourages those passages to take residence in the heart, according to Peggy Rosenthal's Purl One, Purl a Prayer: A Spirituality of Knitting.  During this peaceful activity, the knitter can settle down and open up to spiritual thoughts and feelings. While engaging in this practice, I collected a group of reflections on prayer and experiences of mindfulness that encourage spiritual activity; they are included in this post. They are from the Christian and Buddhist traditions.  

Prayer Scarf/Neck Warmer Pattern and Aspiration Instructions

Convert knitting into a resource for prayer.  Use the simple instructions below on how to open up your knitting with gratitude, fill it with focused prayerful intention, and conclude it in thankfulness and spiritual determination.  Also included is a pattern for a prayer scarf/neck warmer.

Spirit of a Dove Prayer Shawl and Mindfulness Instructions

           

Mindful knitting, someone asked me, isn't that redundant?  Isn't it impossible to lack mindfulness while knitting?  All I had to say was: frogging.  Knitters, you know what I mean.  Not only did I want to appreciate my time spent knitting but I wanted it to do more.  I mean, sometimes a sweater takes me two years.  An afgan, forget counting the months.  I wanted the hours to deepen my experience of knitting, my experience of myself, my experience of others.  I wanted knitting to become a spiritual practice; so I researched, and designed projects, and now I'm ready to share.