I am just back from an overnight retreat of the Standing Committee, Commission on Ministry Committee on Discernment and Postulants and Candidates. The retreat was based on sabbath and the designers wanted us all to take a sabbath. Perhaps for the SC and DCOM folks engaging in sabbath was easier; I remember how nerve-wracking the visits with the DCOM were when I was going through the process. But that was many years ago and in another diocese.
It was most difficult for me to enter into sabbath because I had gone up to the retreat center with NO work to do (despite there being piles of it back at home — it is the week before annual meeting) and then was mildly horrified to find out that we were unscheduled for the evening. ¡Ay!
This morning, however, was engaging and part of the two small group activities was to make prayer flags.
Prayer flags are inscribed with auspicious symbols, invocations, prayers, and mantras. Tibetan Buddhists for centuries have planted these flags outside their homes and places of spiritual practice for the wind to carry the beneficent vibrations across the countryside. Prayer flags are said to bring happiness, long life and prosperity to the flag planter and those in the vicinity.
Dharma flags may be placed either inside of a building to increase the spiritual atmosphere or outdoors where the wind can carry their prayers. Traditionally, they are fastened to eaves or sewn onto ropes to be displayed horizontally or they are fastened to wooden poles for vertical display. Sets of five color flags should be put in the order: yellow, green, red, white, blue (from left to right or from bottom to top.) The colors represent the elements: earth, water, fire, cloud, sky.
So we were given different coloured cloths from which we could chose one, and an odd assortment of markers (in our group, orange, purple, black, brown, grey, and a very yellow shade of green). We were invited to write or draw whatever we wanted onto the cloth (having been warned not to let the markers bleed through to the surface on which we were writing/drawing). I thought that I would draw the graphic from Notre Dame du Puy, the starting point of the Chemin de Saint Jacques.
Without having it in front of me, I did a somewhat pared-down version of the graphic (of a black Virgin with child, Jesus, in her womb), created for the Jubilee year of 2005 (when the Feast of the Annunciation lands on Good Friday, it is a Jubilee year and one receives, special pardon,' for walking the chemin), and then wrote around it, 'Santa Maria, ruega por nosotros/nosotras.'
I don't have it here; a member of the DCOM said she would take all of our prayer flags home, sew them to the rope (we stapled them), and then hang them outside until the next time the DCOM gets together. Somewhere, then, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, our various prayer flags will flap until spring. That is even better than lighting a ten-day votive candle.
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