As part of your ongoing journey in preparing for the High Holidays (the Days of Awe), this activity will engage you in discovering new ways to make discoveries, and extend understanding beyond verbal and written modalities into the language of texture, rhythm, color, movement and sound.
Revealing Values is an activity that acknowledges what you have achieved this year, using personally selected middot (text) as your inspiration. I hope it will help you continue to focus and grow your goals and values for the coming year.
- 09x12 sheets of paper
- Markers
- Favorite books for inspirational quotes, text, etc.
- Black crayon
Directions:
Create a list of goals, values, and strivings (GVS). Set aside one sheet of paper for each GVS. Then, extract a piece of text, a phrase or a prompt that thematically supports your GVS from a favorite book or other source. Using a colored marker, write your prompt in the center of the page and surround it with your GVS. Completely cover the paper and all of your writing with black crayon. Repeat for each GVS.
As a warm up to your meditation or journaling, begin scratching off the wax to reveal your GVS. I do this scratching of wax in a spiral. I find the meditative and rhythmic form of a spiral is a good beginning, a way to enter into a place requiring focus. Sometimes we need to find a way to transition into deeper reflective work. This activity eases the transition. You can also remove wax in deliverable directions: vertically, sky to ground, horizontally, or east to west. The repetitive movement of removing the wax helps me begin to focus and prepare for deeper reflective writing.
Now, take some time to journal about this experience and your GVS.
If you enjoyed this activity, be sure to check out more activities to prepare for the Days of Awe:
The above activities are selections from my upcoming book Life Through a Creative Lens being published by Creative Arts Enrichment in 2017.
© 2016 Jacqueline Serebrani-Kesner
