When Vivika Hansen deNegre began The Prayer Flag Project, she hoped that the prayer flags would spread "positive hopes and prayers for peace, compassion, and creativity beyond the borders of our own little world."
Living water has the capacity to cross all sorts of borders, boundaries and obstacles.
May you find a source of living water today, be it a drop, a stream, a river or a flood.

Each of us has a centrepoint from which all we do radiates. This centre-point, this still-point has many names, many guises but it is the same life-force which enables, empowers and encourages us to reach out. It is this same centre-point which invites, which beckons us into the quiet of the heart to renew and refresh.
Let us take a moment, a breath, a heartbeat to find our centre-point.
Let us name it.
Let us encounter its life-force.
Let our lives be different because of that encounter.

Loving is an act of will. I choose to love or not to love.
I love as a response to knowing that I am loved ... unconditionally, irrepressibly.
What do I love? Who do I love?
What could I love? Who could I love?
What should I love? Who should I love?
Let us choose to love today.

Today I hung a flag called 'Letting go'. It is reminescent of Autumn, with its colours and trees 'letting go' of their leaves. It has an important message for me.
To let go of a desire for wealth and a fear of poverty.
To let go of a desire for health and a fear of sickness.
To let go of a desire for companionship and a fear of loneliness.
To let go of a desire for consolation and a fear of desolation.
To let go of a desire for busy-ness and a fear of stillness.
To let go of the past and a fear of the future.
Letting go enables me to live in this moment, NOW.
Letting go of attachments to anything, good or bad, positive or negative, real or imagined, frees to me live and love in this moment: FULLY. CONSCIOUSLY. GRATEFULLY.
May we all be blessed as we let go of something this day.

Sarah Ban Breathnach says, "...we all need the reassuring and healing messages that treasured rituals provide."  Somedays I am reluctant to participate in this self-imposed ritual of making a prayer flag a day. But I honour the intention with which I made this commitment and create a flag. I photograph it and I hang it. I must trust the process and allow the breath of the spirit, the wind, to do its part. I may never know where the blessings travel, or who feels the caress of a blessing on their cheek, but that is OK. I am reassured by the simple knowledge that I have done my part.
May a treasured ritual in your life reassure you today.

I am finding it difficult to watch my prayer flags slowly change in the variable weather we are having this autumn. Wild winds have twisted hanging threads and origami cranes. Sun has bleached the colour out of once-were vibrant pinks and reds. Spiders have spun their delicate filament from the ribbons to the eaves. Rain has rinsed the stamped ink from some of the flags.
At first, I saw this as a deterioration; a slow decay. I wanted to rescue these precious works of art and store them indoors. I had a desperate urge to repair; to fix up or to neaten the fraying edges. But this would deny them the chance to be fully what they were created to be ... blessings on the wind.
Each day, I have become more aware that the process of aging is one of transformation, not of deterioration.  There is an intrinsic beauty in each stage of life, and one cannot mature until one surrenders a more youthful stage. Arnaud Desjardins says, " Life is expressed in a perpetual sequence of changes. The birth of a child is the death of a baby, just as the birth of an adolescent is the death of the child."
May each day reveal that I am part of a beautiful, engaging, transforming journey ... my life.

For over five decades, I have disliked wind. It unsettled me. Took my breath away. Everything appeared dishevelled and messy. Now, having made and hung prayer flags for nearly a month, my attitudes are changing. 'Blessings on the Wind' are truly that.
I feel as if I am experiencing wind and the movement of air for the first time. There is an enjoyment of the simple pleasures of letting air flow between my fingers instead of walking with a closed hand. Pausing and savouring the smells of food cooking, carried on a breeze to me. Watching a host of dandelions dancing in a gentle breeze with gay abandon. Clouds streaking breathless across the sky.
As I send blessings out into the world on the wind, so too, am I receiving them.
May you be richly blessed today.

During Lent, 2012, I decided to join with many around the world in The Prayer Flag Project. I set a framework to work within. One flag a day for a year (more if I feel inspired!). The size is 5 inches by 11 inches. 3 inches is folded over to form a casing at the top. I would only use materials on hand ... no special purchases. I will spend no more than one hour per day on a flag. I would photograph each flag in the morning and hang it on a string outside.
Working within fairly strict guidelines is always a challenge for me. But it demands that I honour my time as a gift and not fritter it away unnecessarily on seeking perfection. The guidelines cause me to consider the essence of what I want to communicate and focus solely on this. This challenge encourages me to contemplate my day, my environment, my desires and gives me a unique opportunity to share it with others. Most of all, making each prayer flag invites me to broaden my outlook and let blessings be carried on the wind, to whomever passes by, unhindered by my interference.

A prayer flag a day for a year.
May we all be blessed.