Do you have 15 minutes today? If you do, I assure you, whether you have 7, 10, 15, or 30 minutes…or even five little minutes, you can make journaling work for you! However, some mornings are meant for lingering. Whether partnered with hot coffee, or iced tea, summer mornings provide a plethora of possibilities to ponder long past what our schedules may allow. But if we plan well, we can find, within the framework of our days, pockets of time that allow us reflective moments, and welcoming stillness where beauty may slip right into our tightly scheduled time.
This post has more pics than usual, due to the startling, pink exquisite rose that was my muse on the morning that inspired this post.
Summer Morning Meditations
Today’s prompt will be a timed writing. You will need to choose a scripture or quote to reflect and meditate on. Choose your passage, write it out in your journal or notebook.
Option 1: Reflect and sit with the chosen passage for 2-3 minutes. Allow yourself to be fully present to your surroundings, but also let the words be your focal point as you sit quietly. Read the words to yourself. Think about the words and allow them to sit within you. After your reflective time, set your timer to 5 minutes. Begin writing what the words are speaking to you, in your life this day. Keep coming back to the words, and write what comes. Keep your pen moving. Once you hear the timer. Stop writing. Take a breath. You can now decide whether you want to continue writing or not. If so, reread the passage you responded to, write again, before returning to read your own words.
Option 2: Memorization. You will write your passage of scripture or quote on an index card. On the flipside of the card, go ahead and list the first letter of each word. Use this to help memorize and prompt your memory Otherwise you will have your quote/scripture on one page and the listed letters on another page. This increases your meditation and memorization capacity- or it does for me. Try it. I use my journal and index cards for this, and really love writing scriptures of different Bible translations! I often do both journal and index card, and carry the index card.
Option 3: Draw, Doodle, Collage, Sketch. Do you like to explore alternative journaling styles but cautiously? Take your passage and do something different with it. Discover your inner kiddo and doodle, (no judgement), or sketch around it. No rules. Just break the rules in your own head about having to do this a certain way. Make new rules and follow them. Or break them. Option 3 is all about you!
Option 4: Is it prayable? Pray your passage or quote, with your pen into your journal and make the words worthy of your time, and focus.
Happy Journaling! Let me know if you try any of these, or if all else fails, find yourself a rose to sit with, and you will be renewed in the beauty of it!
Enthusiastically, Dawn
Enthusiastically, Dawn 