On Prayer Shawls in the wake of Katrina
Friends,
A friend recently wrote to point out that more than forty days have passed since
I last posted to my blog. A combination of an extremely busy travel schedule, a
commitment to protect what little family time I have, and my laptop being out of
commission for more than four weeks, have all led to this long, quiet,
interlude. There is much to catch up on, and I want to begin with several posts
to offer impressions of three days that I’ve just spent in South Louisiana and
Mississippi Presbyteries. (By the way, if you’ve been waiting for email from me,
please hang in there. I’m trying to dig out from under a pile of several hundred
emails that have built up during this crazy time.)
I was supposed to spend the last eight days traveling in the Synod of the Lakes
and Prairies. However, on Labor Day, a week after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf
Coast, Interim General Presbyter Mike Mann from S. Louisiana Presbytery called
me to ask if I could be with them on Sunday the 11th for a special meeting of
the Presbytery. Folks in Lakes and Prairies were extremely gracious and
encouraged me to go, and everywhere I went in their Synod the first question I
was asked was how Presbyterians can respond to the victims of Katrina. So, after
five and a half days of visits to Duluth, Minneapolis, northeast Nebraska, Storm
Lake Iowa, and Rapids City S. Dakota, I spent my last morning at Crossroads
Presbyterian Church, a growing, vibrant, exciting church just north of
Milwaukee.
As I rushed toward the car after the first service in order to make my flight,
one of the women in the congregation stopped me to offer me a “prayer shawl.” I
didn’t know anything about prayer shawls, but there is a movement of folks who
pray for whoever will eventually receive the shawl they are making, and then who
pray each stitch as something of a spiritual discipline as they work. (check out
their website at
www.shawlministry.com.) Mine was a large, soft, bluish-green shawl, and it
was given to me with prayers for my time as moderator.
As I flew to Baton Rouge, I was having a hard time organizing my thoughts. What
could one say to be helpful to pastors and elders, when many of them have lost
everything themselves, many of their churches will not be habitable for weeks or
even months to come, and many of their parishioners have been scattered. I spent
the flight thumbing through my Bible and meditating, praying that God might help
me to find the right words and that my presence might be helpful to our
colleagues there.
As I prayed, I held the prayer shawl on my lap, and it occurred to me that it
was a wonderful sign of all of the prayer and concern I have heard from
Presbyterians as I’ve traveled during the last two weeks. There was a card
pinned to the shawl with a short prayer of support for those who receive it, and
I read the prayer over and over as we flew. Here are the words to the prayer:
May God's grace be upon this shawl...warming, comforting, enfolding and
embracing. May this mantle be a safe haven... a sacred place of security and
well-being... sustaining and embracing in good times as well as difficult ones.
May the one who receives this shawl be cradled in hope, kept in joy, graced with
peace, and wrapped in love. Blessed Be!
Late on the afternoon of the 11th, I was offered the chance to share a few words
with more than one hundred Presbyterian pastors and elders at the meeting, and
as I concluded my remarks, I offered the shawl to Hawley Wolfe - the Moderator
of the Presbytery - with the request that he pray on it himself for awhile, and
then pass it on to someone else in the Presbytery to help sustain them. He
draped it over the pulpit where we were gathered at First Presbyterian Church,
and it remained there throughout the rest of the meeting and our worship.
Two days later, I was headed for Mississippi and regretting the fact that I
didn’t have another shawl to offer. One of my stops there was to help dedicate a
“Tent Village for volunteers” at Gautier Presbyterian Church on the coast (more
about that later). As we sat on folding chairs in the hot sun and waited for the
dedication to begin, one of the women from the church said something to the
other women sitting with us about their prayer shawls. I couldn’t believe it. It
turns out that their small church, like the large congregation in Mequon, WI,
has a ministry of making prayer shawls, and Pat, Sue, Dottie and Aubin all
participated in the ministry. Aubin, who proudly announced to me that she was
the oldest member of the congregation, said that she had her shawl with her in
the car.
We agreed that I would use Aubin’s prayer shawl to begin a similar chain of
encouragement and support in their Presbytery, and the shawl that she handed me
was almost exactly like the one I had left behind in S. Louisiana, right down to
the color of the yarn. As I “presented” the shawl to Pat, she agreed that she
would return it to Aubin, and bring the latest one she had finished to the
church to be blessed in prayer before being handed on to the next of the ten
churches on the Gulf Coast whose families have had their lives turned upside
down.
I love it when God works on me that way, opening my eyes, all at once in a rush,
to something that I know nothing about. As I offered both of the shawls, I
assured our sisters and brothers of South Louisiana that these shawls come with
a commitment to prayer from the rest of us across the country. I hope that all
folks, Presbyterians and others, will find a way to pause each day and hold the
victims of Katrina in prayer. Further, I hope that this will be the kind of
prayer that I heard Brian Blount, a professor at Princeton Seminary, talk about
last summer. He said that his mother taught him not to get down on his knees in
prayer to God unless he is willing to get up and go to work for what he’s just
prayed for.
Theologically, I believe that in moments of tragedy we are not to ask “Why did
this happen?” but instead, “What would God have us do?” This is a time for the
church, in all places, to BE church.
Prayerfully,
Rick