The tangible fabric of prayer
Published: October 7, 2005
One is a ministry that makes quilts with threads hanging from them so churchgoers can say prayers for the recipients and tie a knot as a reminder of hope and love.
Another is a mitzvah, acts of human kindness involving an ever-growing tapestry that becomes like a giant prayer shawl during the High Holy Days for those in need of God’s comfort.
They are separate projects, Christian and Jewish, that share a single vision: a fabric of prayer so tangible that you can reach out and touch it.
The prayer quilts are part of a nonprofit organization called Prayers and Squares, which began more than a decade ago at a North County church and has since spread internationally to more than 350 chapters, most of them based in churches of various denominations. Lutherans in Pacific Beach, Methodists in La Mesa and evangelicals in the United Arab Emirates are all part of Prayers and Squares.
“It’s not a quilting ministry, it’s a prayer ministry,” says Wendy Mathson, a Poway woman and founding member. “What we’re trying to do is get people focused on intercessory prayer.”
The quilts are made and dozens of threads are attached, like short shoe strings. After a recipient is identified, specific prayers are said – generally at the church on Sundays – and knots are tied to represent each of those prayers. Mathson has heard enough stories to know the quilts are good medicine. “They will say they felt strangely warmed, not just by the covering of the quilt but the power in it.”
The Mi Shebeirach Tapestry, named after a Jewish blessing for healing, was started by a volunteer at a San Diego synagogue and has likewise spread to temples around the country.
Its panels, made up of 10-inch squares decorated by members and friends of the synagogue, is brought up on the bima, the temple’s raised platform, and held next to people who came up to pray for blessings and healing. Arlene Miller, the Del Cerro woman behind this tapestry, says it’s a way of physically connecting people, to feel a sense of oneness as the congregation sings the prayer.
“That’s the human part of us that needs to be physically touched and hugged and cared about that way,” she says.
The Mi Shebeirach Tapestry came out of a wedding.
Before her daughter’s marriage ceremony in 1999, Miller sent fabric squares to the guests and asked them to decorate each one. She arranged the squares on a brocade backing, and a seamstress sewed them together for the chupah, the traditional Jewish wedding canopy.
The effect was stunning. “I just felt all that love enveloping us,” says Miller
On the way home, she told her husband that it would be nice if their synagogue, Temple Emanu-El in Del Cerro, had a similar tapestry made by members for the healing blessing. Rabbi Martin Lawson, Emanu-El’s spiritual leader, liked the idea, and Miller began soliciting the congregation to decorate their own white cotton squares with messages and images of healing.
“At first, it was very slow,” she says. “But little by little, people started doing squares.”
As the squares came in, she arranged them on a brocade background, two rows of nine squares on each panel (18 is an important number in Judaism, symbolizing life). Counting the border, each panel is a little over 7 feet long.
The decorations are diverse – and so are the mediums. There’s a multicolored heart painted on one square. Another has a Hebrew phrase written with sequins that means “I sing to God.” There is an embroidered ladder. And still another uses colored cords to form a rainbow with the written message: “God says: You try and I’ll help.”
“Whatever comes in seems to work,” Miller says. “It just comes together.”
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