Tracks : Creative Worship

Lenten act of creative worship, based on Jesus being in the wilderness with the wild animals:

Take two sheets of paper.  On one, draw around your left foot; on the other, draw around your right foot.  Carefully, tear to and around the footprints.  You will now have four ‘feet’ – two ‘positive’ images and two ‘negative’ images.

Place your footprints on the ground.  The ‘positive’ might represent where you are right now; the space ahead, where you are heading to, known or unknown.  It may represent a recognition that you stand, barefoot, on holy ground.  The ‘negative’ might represent where you have come from, and might be a prompt for repentance and/or for thanksgiving.  It may represent another, invisible – a guardian angel, or Jesus – who walks with you.

Take the time to reflect on the footprints, to consider what you might want to say to God, to ask God what he might want to say to you.  You might want to move the footprints you have placed.

Do this with a group of people.  Give opportunity for people to share the things they have brought to God, or received from God, in these moments.  Consider making a track of footprints, to represent the pilgrim journey we are on together.  This might be in a straight line, say towards the altar table in a church building, or towards a cross.  Or you might invite people to place their footprints in front of the last, but taking the line in whatever direction they feel appropriate.

Consider doing this in a variety of spaces, including public spaces, spaces not commonly thought of as sacred.

Consider offering a range of colours of paper, and what picking one colour rather than another might express: I choose blue, because at the moment, I walk with tears in my eyes...I choose yellow, because I walk with joy...I choose red, in respect of those who have lost their lives in earthquake or flood...I choose green, because...