Grab a pen & paper and try the exercises below.
All exercises are adapted from Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making, by John Fox (Founder and President of The Institute for Poetic Medicine).
Exercise 1 can be found here.
Exercise 2 can be found here.
Exercise 3: Prayer Poems
Prayer is a way to communicate with the Divine
Prayer is a way to love the spirit of whatever is dear to you. Prayer is a way to let your heart cry out. Prayer is a way to come exactly as you are to the Unknown, the mystery of it all. Bring to your prayer what is raw, what is sublime. Prayer is a way to welcome a wider vision of life for you. Are you aware of the silence that your prayer words join with? Prayer is words strung like beads on the thread of your silence.
What fertile silence do you long to enter? How does this kind of silence effect your world?
How does divine guidance respond to your plea for help? What oppressive silence do you want to break? And by saying what? Who reaches your heart in those times when no one else can?
What are you in awe of? What do you want to praise? What awakens your heart to great joy?
Try writing a prayer of your own. Here is an example:
The Dreamer
Pour my eternity
into the chalice of today
Let me drink, drink, drink
my journeys down
and travel the night on three white horses
I with a rose
dangling from my mouth
a star in each eye
a sun in my heart
and the moon to give my crossroads light.
~ Sherry Reiter from Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making