Building on Your Word of the Year - C in A-Z Word of the Year Challenge

Build on Your Word of the Year by Creating a Cairn

Welcome to the third installment of the A-Z Word of the Year Challenge - C. The series includes 26 posts every other Tuesday during 2019 that include questions, an activity, and a suggested A-Z letter word/s to apply to individual words people have chosen as their Word of the year.

Cairns

Cairn is a Celtic word. Merriam Webster describes a cairn as “a heap of stones piled up as a memorial or as a landmark

“Cairns have been uses for a broad variety of purposes, from prehistoric times to the present.” They have been built and used as burial monuments, for defense, hunting, ceremonial purposes, sometimes relating to astronomy, to locate buried items, such as caches of food or objects; and to mark trails in many parts of the world. I first learned about cairns while walking a trail to a canyon viewpoint in Utah and was quite thankful for their marking of the path. The cairns along the way often pointed out the right path to take or to help people remember the right way.

Creative Cairn Activity

Make a cairn of stones with your word and its synonyms using actual stones and/or in your journal.

For the lettering on the stones of the first photo at the beginning of this post, I used [easyazon_link identifier="B001VB4T86" locale="US" nw="y" tag="valeriesjodin.com-20"]white and black Posca paint pens, size PC1M.1.[/easyazon_link]
For how-to make a journal page of collage and pen with stones and pebbles, there are many ways you can do it. There is a video I've made further below showing one way. The Stones & Pebbles tilings stencils make it easy, fun, with beautiful results.
For the lettering in the journal page below I used the extra-fine white Posca pen, and Micron pens of various widths including the black brush pen for the shadow under some of the rocks with lettering.
To see how I painted the stone papers please see video below.

Stones-Pebbles-Valerie-Sjodin©-Cairns-spread.jpg

Scripture

Throughout the Bible in the Hebrew Scripture, God’s people built memorials and alters with stones.

In the book of Samuel chapter 7, the Israelites, who had turned back to following Yahweh, were being attacked by enemies. The prophet Samuel sacrificed to God and cried out to Him on behalf of his people. God Himself fought the battle and won the victory for His people.

“Then Samuel took a rock and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer [Rock of Help] and said, “Until now Yahweh has helped us.” 1 Samuel 7:12 NOG

Stones-Pebbles-Valerie-Sjodin©-1-Samuel-7.jpg

Peter, one of Jesus Yeshua’s followers, describes us as living stones:

1 Peter 2: 4-9 NOG

4 You are coming to Christ, the living stone who was rejected by humans but was chosen as precious by God. 5 You come to him as living stones, a spiritual house that is being built into a holy priesthood. So offer spiritual sacrifices that God accepts through Yeshua Christ.

9 However, you are chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people who belong to God. You were chosen to tell about the excellent qualities of God, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not God’s people, but now you are. Once you were not shown mercy, but now you have been shown mercy.