Using Our Hands to Find Our Souls

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by Melanie C. Reuter, D.Min.

About fifteen years ago, in the midst of my 30-year career as a Christian Educator, I was at my wit’s end due to discipline problems in my youth group. These discipline issues weren’t mean-spirited, but still, having two or three teenagers talk the whole time I was trying to teach was frustrating and tiresome. As I prepared to lead a Lenten Bible Study with these teens, I decided to order a dozen small craft kits that cost only $4.99 for the twelve. I mention the price so you understand that these little kits, which came in individual plastic bags about the size of a matchbook, were nothing special. As I started the lesson, I tossed a kit-in-a-bag to each teen. No explanation, no additional materials, nothing. My hope was that the talkers would be distracted long enough for the non-talkers to hear the lesson.

Melanie Reuter Knitting

Forty-five minutes later, as the session was concluding, I realized that I had just witnessed something marvelous. The teens had all completed the craft in their kits—sometimes with the help of friends when they got stumped—and they were really proud of them. They had all participated in the conversation, even the ones who usually never said a word. But even more, their participation in the conversation had gone more deeply than expected. A fleeting thought crossed my mind: Did using their hands make it easier for them to engage?

A week later, I was teaching a Lenten program with third graders on the topic of prayer. I decided that rather than just teach the lesson, I would talk about pretzels as symbols of prayer—while we baked pretzels in the kitchen. Again, something marvelous happened. Eight year olds were discussing prayer, and they were also having the time of their lives baking pretzels. This time the fleeting thought that crossed my mind was: Will this work with adults?

Art and Spirituality

Thus began my journey in the arts and spirituality. What I was grasping intuitively at a very basic level was given articulation, theological foundation, and meaning when I studied with Cathy Kapikian, the recently retired Director of the Luce Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. She introduced our class to an in-depth look at the creative process—where it comes from, how it develops, and what makes it sacred. She provided a historical overview of art in the Christian West, and worked with us to try and define what it is that makes art, art. She took us on field trips, introduced us to artists, and took us to see her own works of art in various locations around DC. All the while, she encouraged our class to risk a creative journey as a means of spiritual insight. (For more information, see Cathy’s book,Art in Service of the Sacred, Abingdon Press, 2006.)

Spiritual Insight through the Creative Process

Interest in using the creative process as a means to a spiritual insight is growing. Nearly everyone is familiar these days with the Prayer Shawl Ministry (see Susan S. Jorgensen and Susan S. Izard,Knitting into the Mystery: A Guide to the Shawl-Knitting Ministry, Morehouse Publishing, 2003), which calls upon people to knit, crochet, or quilt shawls that are infused with prayer for the sick, the newly born, and the newly married—the prayers being offered for the recipient as the item is coming into existence through the loving hands creating it. This shawl-making is an early foray into what I call active prayer. Active prayer, which might include making prayer beads or prayer flags, encourages those who want more from their prayer life to create something while they are praying.

Art Journaling

In 2007, Sybil MacBeth published Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God (Paraclete Press). This book, which starts off simply enough but moves on to deeper insights, comes at the peak of interest in active prayer and moves into the realm of art journaling, another useful spiritual guide. Art journaling uses art, as well as words, to engage the participant in journaling. One of my favorite books on this topic, True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling (L.K. Ludwig, Quarry Books, 2008), has a chapter entitled “Spirituality and Dreams” which provides prompts for intentional spiritual exploration using art journaling. I find that True Vision is a great follow-up to MacBeth’s Praying in Color when facilitating persons interested in more active prayer lives.

Sharing Spiritual Practices Together

I wanted to find a way to introduce such practices to others by offering classes, workshops, and if needed, private spiritual direction. How could I help people embark on a path to enlightenment through interaction with the arts? How could I provide opportunities for people to develop creativity and look at themselves and our world in new ways? The answer seemed to begin with an endeavor that I call “Hands to Soul.”

For example, at a recent class entitled “Women & Tears,” we gathered around a table to create tear bottles. Tear bottles were used by the Victorians to capture (literally) their tears. I purchased glass vials with corks for our tear bottles and let the participants make them beautiful with paint and epoxy putty and beads. While the women’s hands were covered in paint and glue, I gently broached the subject of mourning. Slowly at first, then gathering momentum, the women began to talk, really talk, about the deaths they had experienced in their lives—deaths of loved ones and other kinds of deaths such as divorce or loss of career. But there were no real tears because just as the conversation might have become depressing, we were suddenly laughing about someone’s accident with paint or remarking on someone’s beautiful creation. This was art therapy at its finest, enhanced by the Spirit who loves and cares for us. Truly, these women used their hands to find their souls.

What have I learned from helping others use their hands to find their souls? What difference does creativity make in the life of a spiritual seeker? I would say the most significant difference is the freedom of expression participants experience when using their hands. After years of teaching within the confines of the church, I discovered that participants would sometimes go deeply in discussing a medical issue or a family problem, but seldom were they comfortable enough to talk openly and deeply about their encounters with God. And there are always those in the group who say nothing at all. But when someone creates a collage about prayer, it seems easier to tell others, “This is me over here in the corner because I didn’t feel God was listening.” When someone makes a mosaic, it may be easier to tell others, “This rose comes to me in my dreams.” When someone makes a tear bottle, it facilitates the admission that she’s afraid to die.

Having these spiritual encounters out in the open, with everyone participating, builds community and allows the community a chance to respond. And sharing our encounters with God enables all of us to better understand our own souls.

We were created as physical beings, and our bodies are ways through which we meet with God, share with others, and serve the world. Every part of our physical beings can be involved in this spiritual connection. The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a close friend of Martin Luther King and joined him in the Civil Rights Movement, wrote:

For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

There are so many ways that our hands can pray and sing, too. And as they do, they open up new windows to our souls.

Melanie C. Reuter is the owner of Hands to Soul in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a small business housed inside Via Creativa Gallery which offers classes and workshops on art and spirituality.