To listen deeply and beyond words

I have a sketchbook where I started drawing a series of Mary Magdalene drawings in 2023. I used it a little in 2024, and I plan to fill it with more Mary Magdalene drawings to share here in 2025. I noticed that I had written the years, so I decided to write 2025, and then I kept drawing…

Yesterday, when I wrote Desires, I had no idea what I was going to write, but by the time I finished, I had so many answers.

I was worried about drawing the same drawing each time, and about being boring and repetitive. But then, when I wrote that each drawing is a prayer, I understood that it’s part of the process I’m creating for myself to get back to myself, and that I need to go through it with what is easy, joyous, and flowing.

A prayer is a mantra that’s repeated again and again, while the mind calms and thoughts and emotions blend into visions. A drawing is a series of marks that are connected into aesthetic patterns of lines, values, shapes, color, texture, form and space. In the moment of drawing, the mind calms and the vision emerges. By drawing Mary Magdalene over and over, I am creating an ongoing prayer of the heart to safely bring me to freedom and the rest of my desires.

A drawing doesn’t have to be elaborate to produce calm. The edges of the pages of my high school and college notebooks were full of little doodles that helped me get through classes. Drawing has always helped me to listen more deeply and understand better.

I never thought about this before. And I wonder if drawing is a way to listen more deeply and beyond words.