Making a mandala

I loved making this on a gardening and mindfulness day we held in our churchyard.

It reminded me powerfully that everything we create is created from something we have been given. Everything we have is a gift, including the desire to create something beautiful.

A mandala is a circle object with something at its centre. For me, the circle of daisies represents the people in my life, each one incredibly beautiful and intricate but each one fragile – the petals at the heart is the love of God and the yellow petals scattered in the represent golden moments. At least that’s what it all meant to me!

Lucy who explained the mandala idea as a basis for meditation made the point that it’s not meant to be permanent; after you have created it, you should either sweep it away or leave it to be blown by the wind.

This felt very positive for me: an excellent reminder again that nothing we create is permanent but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful and we shouldn’t get too stressed about our own little lives when as the Bible puts it “we are like the grass of the field here today and gone tomorrow.

I say those words every time I lay someone to rest in that very same churchyard in which I made this mandala. And the very next words that come after that sentence are: “ but the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases”.

What matters is not that anyone remembers the exact shape of my life. What matters is that I live it in a way that is beautiful and glorifying to the God who gave it to me.

One day the life given to me in this fragile human body will be transformed into a body I cannot even imagine, the only thing I know is that God will have fulfilled his desire to have me in his eternal circle and I will have been drawn close into his heart.