Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation

In this wired, wild world, it is harder than ever to shut out noise and busyness in order to truly calm yourself, but in Crafting Calm, a D.I.Y. guide to peace of mind, you'll find inspiring ideas for how to do exactly that through a wide range of creative exercises. In this book, author Maggie Oman Shannon explores crafts and creativity as a practice with enormous physical, mental, and spiritual benefits. By immersing ourselves in a craft with intention and mindfulness, we can quiet those voices around us and in us--we can enter sacred stillness. Through revealing interviews, personal stories, and forty suggested activities, the author shows how creative processes can become spiritual practices. Whether you're an aspiring artist, longtime craftsperson, or someone who has never set foot in a craft-store (yet!), you'll find something in Crafting Calm to inspire you.

Crafts and how-to ideas include contemplation candles, visual journals, prayer shawls, collage mandalas, intention beads, finger labyrinths, personal prayer flags, spiritual toolkits, and tabletop altars.

Features inspired craft ideas from luminaries such as Angeles Arrien, Mary Ann Radmcher, Shiloh Sophia McCloud, Sister Marianne Heib, May Ann Brussat, and many more.

Rev. Maggie Oman Shannon, MA, is an ordained Unity minister, spiritual director, workshop and retreat facilitator, and author of six previous books: Prayers for Healing; The Way We Pray: Prayer Practices from Around the World; A String and a Prayer: How to Make and Use Prayer Beads (coauthor); One God, Shared Hope; Prayers for Hope and Comfort; and Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation. In 2000, Oman Shannon founded The New Story, a coaching and consulting business focused on helping people create deeper meaning in their lives. Oman Shannon is the senior minister of Unity Spiritual Center of San Francisco and has served as its spiritual leader since 2010. She also hosts a weekly hour-long radio show on Unity.fm called Creative Spirit. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and teenage daughter, for whom she is very grateful.

Mary Anne Radmacher is a writer and an artist. She conducts workshops on living a full, creative, balanced life, teaches Internet writing seminars, and works with individual clients. She has been writing since she was a child, and she uses her writing to explore symbols and find meaning. Among her special honors she counts the respect of her peers and the friendship of children. She is the author of Lean Forward into Your Life (Conari Press, 2007), and Live Boldly (Conari Press, 2008). She lives with her husband near Seattle, Washington. Visit her online at www.maryanneradmacher.com or www.maryanneradmacher.net.