I began my path in the Anglican Church as a five-year-old child after a near death experience. In my twenties I felt the expression of the faith shown by my church members was more for show than about actually expressing love in the community.

This led me to thinking “There has to be more.”

I wondered what attracted people to different religions – I wanted to learn about other religions, and other belief systems.  I have read a lot; I have tried a lot.  I have spent forty years being a seeker, eclectically keeping things that resonated and leaving behind what did not. I have reached a point where I am now settled into a personal relationship with my creator, my Holy One.

I have no building in which to worship because for me all creation is sacred.  I need no priest to intercede because I speak to the Holy One every day. 

In the past I needed tools and sacred settings to perform scripted rituals, but over time I came to realise these were only to put me into the right mindset for sacred work.  I have grown past the need to do this. 

However, life does have a habit of distracting me. And I often find myself feeling I need something to remind me to return to walking the path.

There is a tradition in many religions of using prayer beads – to anchor the attention through touch, calming the nervous system and creating rhythm and sacred intention. It is with this in mind that I came to the decision to make some prayer beads for myself – to run through my fingers in prayer, but more importantly to carry in my pocket or my hands, as a reminder of the path I walk.

Having made this decision, I needed to make choices. Would I make a strand or a circle?  Would I use them to count repetitions? If used for prayers, what prayers were important to me? How many beads?  What would the beads look like? 

I will share these choices in the next post.