Lent 12: holy doodling.

Two of my favorite art books are Picture This and What it is by cartoonist Lynda Barry. I love these books because she invites her readers to participate in the creative process. She encourages you to doodle, to color, to rip apart and paste back together, to draw and scribble. She takes art down from the shelf of serious high art, and into the realm of the every day. She invites her readers to play, and to stop worrying about the results. I love her books because for her being an artist doesn't mean aiming for perfection. It's much more about the process. You can listen to a wonderful interview with Barry where she describes the power of doodling on NPR here.


I love doodling. It allows me to leave my head and feel creative. It connects me to something outside of myself. Even if its just making a pattern of squiggly lines on the margins of a notepad, it helps freedom and creativity to flow. Lately, I have taken up the habit of doodling in my Bible. I use colored pencils to draw in the margins as I read. I circle and underline. I draw stars and waves and stick figures. I interact with the text. It's messy and ugly, and I'm sure not very artful to anyone but me. However, this freedom helps me get a little closer to the story. Instead, of being holy and untouchable, the word of God becomes much more personal.

I think that Christian faith is a lot like the kind of creativity that Barry describes when she talks about doodling. It's okay if we scribble and wobble and smudge and get a little messy in the process of faith. It's a beautiful thing just to get something on the page. I think too often we fear theology, the Bible, prayer or church in general because we don't want to get it wrong. But finding God is like a creative adventure; its silly and scary and meaningful. Its a journey that twists and turns and spirals. Its sacred and holy and messy. But we have to be willing to pick up our crayons and dare to be artists.