It
needs to be big. We suggest a wall. If you don’t have or don’t
want to designate a wall for this purpose (parish hall, kitchen,
sanctuary, anywhere people gather), then consider hanging panels
of cardboard. Panels that are perhaps the four feet by eight feet.
Start with two, symbolizing the Trade Center Towers. Hang them (after
the painting process, as described below is complete) as you would
a painting, with wire or string, or fishing line, from a molding.
Hooks from the ceiling and thin chain would do. Hang them out a
bit from the wall itself. (You could also purchase wardrobe boxes
from U-Haul, designing this project in the round.)
Gather your group, after church, during the education hour, one
evening this week.
Sit or stand in prayer. Remember, silently or aloud, the images
you’ve seen over the days since the collapse of the Towers
and the destruction of the Pentagon. Remember those you love, and
those you don’t even know who have lost loved ones. Remember
those who don’t yet know.
Paint the cardboard a solid color.
Then make paints (tempuras, finger paints, even acrylics), fabric
and glue, glitter, markers, pens and whatever other materials you
have on hand, available to all the people.
Ask them to paint a collage of color, colors representing feelings.
Have them write questions of God, questions of each other. Ask them
to identify and articulate feelings. Suggest that they ask each
other for help in expressing deep feelings.
Fill up the cardboard. Perhaps this will take one Sunday, perhaps
two or three.
Then, in Church, during Prayer Time or before a service begins,
ask people to write their prayer offerings on index cards. Prayers
for the victims. Prayers for their families and friends. Prayers
for the medical community. Prayers for stability. Prayers for peace.
Ask people to articulate the prayer concerns of their hearts, with
words, or pictures.
Fold the cards twice, in half, and then in half again. And in the
cardboard hangings, make slits with a knife, slits an inch apart.
You can make rows and columns or do it randomly. It doesn’t
matter. Insert the folded prayer cards.
You have made a prayer wall. You might put a prayer box at the foot
of the hangings, to collect prayers for the week, and then add them
on Sunday as a prayer ritual during the service.
Think of the many different ways you could do this project so that
it becomes meaningful in your own community. Adapt it in whatever
way makes sense.
Continue to add to this wall. Consider inviting your wider (town,
city) community to a special prayer service, and make the prayer
wall available.
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