Welcome to Session 5—Using Your Cards Creatively
Creating SoulCollage® cards has been the focus of the Sprigs of Rosemary retreat sessions so far, but there are many ways to go deeper with creating, journaling, praying with or reading your cards. In the ancient prayerful practice of Lectio or Visio Divina, Latin for “divine seeing”, we allow words and images to speak into our hearts. This prayer, recommended by St. Benedict, embraces the universal roles, the archetypes, of Inner Monk and Inner Artist, instead of the worldly roles that we know we can never be fully satisfied with. Planted deep within us are these archetypes that fuel our desire for solitude and prayer, creativity and expression.
What is special about SoulCollage creativity is that it is time spent listening to the images, drawing on our intuition, creating and then listening to what our own creations are saying to us. We are co-creating with the Divine. Holding an image in prayer is powerful. It is not just a craft project.
Creating Cards
Creating cards can be in response to prompts or themes, as we have done in this retreat, or can be intuitively created with no special purpose in mind. Here are some ideas based on the cards I have created:
- Create a card as a visual reminder of your Word of the Year
- 2016—Mercy Always We Begin Again
- 2017—Gentle Be Excessively Gentle: A New Year’s Un-Resolution
- 2018—Cushion 2018 Word of the Year
- 2019—You are Free New and Improved: Always We Begin Again
- Create a card to remember an important point in your spiritual journey or a significant dream.
- Create a visual personal “brand mark”— Pictures are worth a thousand words.
- Create a card to represent universal or archetypal energies at play in your life, such as your Inner Monk, Inner Artist, Wounded Child, Crone, Survivor, etc. More on archetypes.
- For a loved one, to honor or in memory of.
- My daughter— Just Listen: Advice for a Quarter-Life Crisis, Jessica Becoming
- A dying friend— Circle of Friends
- My husband— A Marriage Made of Moments
- Cece— Cece: * A * * Snow * * Day * * Reflection * *
Creativity is an outward sign of your deepest, inner stirrings, the voice of your soul. You cannot be creative unless you are free. This is the power of prayer—to become free of all attachments, to let go of our tendency to control, to surrender the evaluation of self and others, of time as enough or not enough. If we are tied up in outcomes and judgments, we cannot be the creative people God intended us to be.
Journaling or Creative Writing with Your Cards
- Using I am One Who Statements—A Great Light Has Come Upon the Earth
- Responding to Questions—Including the question you created at the beginning of this retreat; can also be used in card readings (below.) Other questions could include: What gifts do have to give me? What message do you have for me? What do you need from me? What are you afraid of? More exciting possibilities here.
- Initiating Prayer—Standing in the Flow
- Writing Poetry— The Door is Open
Reading Your Cards
- A reading from my personal deck of cards— Be Excessively Gentle: A New Year’s Un-Resolution
- Insight from SoulCollage® for Reading Your Cards
So…play with your cards! See what you can learn from them—they are the reflection of your innermost thoughts and feelings. There is no one right way to work creatively or dive deeper into understanding them.
I’ll write more about my card reading and reflections from the retreat in a future post. The synchronicities that result from looking deeply at your images and your life questions are simply amazing!
Final Session coming soon! May your Advent continue to be blessed! Jodi
SoulFully You 
Leave a Reply