Christian and Jewish projects have a common thread: Both provide tangible comfort

By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR

October 6, 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.

"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."

Marsha Stein, who works as a secretary at Emanu-El, fashioned a steaming bowl of matzo ball soup with sequins and colored glue. "To me, the most healing thing in the world, just about, is a good bowl of matzo ball soup," says Stein.

The tapestry made its debut five years ago at a Rosh Hashana service, for the Jewish New Year, at the East County Performing Arts Center in El Cajon. Emanu-El holds its High Holy Days services at the auditorium to accommodate the larger crowds for the annual 10-day period of reflection. The center's stage becomes the bima.

There were three panels back then, and included in the crowd of people who came forward for the prayer was Miller's husband, Daniel. "His face was just beaming, he was so proud," she remembers. But he, too, was in need of healing. He had lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system.

Dr. Daniel Miller, physician, husband and father, did not recover. But his widow is convinced he was healed.

"Healing does not necessarily mean we all get better and go to the country," she begins, as tears cloud her eyes. "I really believe he was at peace when he died. He really was. That, to me, was healing."

The Mi Shebeirach Tapestry has caught on in synagogues around country, spread by word of mouth and presentations that Miller gives at conferences of the Reform branch of Judaism (Emanu-El is a Reform congregation).

It's grown at Emanu-El as well. At Rosh Hashana services Tuesday morning, there were seven panels stretching more than 50 feet. They will be used again a week from today for Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement that concludes the High Holy Days.

The purpose of these prayers is not to overcome death, Rabbi Lawson cautions. "Death is a part of life, and illness is a part of life. Even in Jewish tradition, the proper prayer is not 'God heal me.' The proper prayer is 'Give me the strength, God, to cope with this illness.' "

But Lawson also believes that prayer can work wonders. "I've been a rabbi now since 1974, and I've had too many experiences of people who have been told they have terminal cancer, that they have very little hope of survival, and in turning to prayer and others praying for them, they find the ability for healing. I can't explain it. I know it's not rational."

Each month, a different panel of the tapestry hangs in the Del Cerro synagogue, for use during the Mi Shebeirach blessing on Saturday morning Shabbat services. The panels come together as one during the High Holy Days.

"If you saw the faces of the people at those gatherings and in our own congregation, if you watch the faces, you see people with tears, you see people just respond to this in a way that just brings their soul to the surface," Lawson says. "It's an amazing thing."

The roots of Prayers and Squares go back to 1992 when Mathson and a handful of other women began making quilts at Hope United Methodist Church in Rancho Bernardo. A few years later, Mathson moved to the Community Church of Poway and started the group's second chapter.

While there are independent prayer quilt ministries in various churches, Prayers and Squares is a widespread, organized outreach with a Web site (prayerquilt.org), a slate of officers and rules to follow. A book about the ministry is due out next year.

"I like miracles – that's why I'm in this group," says the current president, Kathy Cueva, who also runs the prayer quilt chapter at Foothills United Methodist Church in La Mesa.

Foothills member Mary Kay Jenkins is one of those miracles, as far as Cueva is concerned. Jenkins herself agrees.

Jenkins was in a coma with septic shock – and when she woke up, the prayer quilt was there. "It was a big factor in knowing that people were still praying for me. It was kind of a symbol of all those prayers," Jenkins says. She ended up having to have both legs amputated below the knees, but today she walks with artificial limbs and teaches at Otay Elementary School in Chula Vista.

On one recent Saturday morning at Foothills, Cueva and several other women gathered to put the finishing touches on five quilts that would be prayed over during worship services the next day before being delivered to their new owners.

A kaleidoscope of colors, each quilt measured some 42 inches wide by 54 inches deep. Each is dotted with dozens of cotton threads, looking like short shoe strings, for the prayer knots. A prayer is said, and the strings are tied.

One of the youngest quilters at Foothills that morning was Taylor Barber, who is 9 and came in her soccer uniform because she had a game later in the day. She has a prayer quilt – given to her when she was having a rough time. She falls asleep with it every night. "I just feel like I'm safe," she says.

Taylor quilts with her aunt, Laurie Barber. "My mom died two years ago, and she received a prayer quilt," says the aunt. "She used to hold a knot and say, 'I'm going to activate this person's prayer.' "

Laurie Barber believes the prayers, and the quilt, brought her mother comfort. She remembers her mother telling her, 'It's going to be OK because God's waiting for me.' "

The next morning, at the two worship services, the quilts hung up front on racks next to the altar area. After each service, they were carried out to the narthex, where churchgoers said individual prayers and tied knots.

Above each quilt was a sign giving the name of the recipient and the prayer being requested. A woman with pancreatic cancer asked for prayers for "the best possible outcome." A man with a tumor wanted people to pray for "complete recovery."

What if these requests don't come true? Does that mean that the prayers failed?

"Sometimes our requests are not perfect," says the Rev. John Farley, senior pastor of Foothills, who calls the quilts a symbol of hope and love for the people who get them.

Theresa Erb says healing comes in many forms. "Sometimes it's an emotional healing or a spiritual healing," says Erb, a Foothills staff member whose job it is to match the right quilt with the right recipient. "I don't think we can anticipate how God is going to answer those prayers."

Nearly half of Americans have prayed for their health or the health of others, according to one national survey. A Harvard University poll found that most people believe their prayers have helped them.

While science is conflicted over whether prayer is a placebo or a benefit, millions of dollars continue to be spent on trying to measure the effects of spirituality on health.

For now, it comes down to personal testimonials – and faith.

"If you feel better when you finish with your prayers . . . then your prayers have been answered," says Miller, the tapestry coordinator.

The tapestry continues to expand (two more panels are nearing completion).

And the quilts continue to be made (two more were prayed over at Christ Lutheran Church in Pacific Beach, another Prayers and Squares chapter, on Sunday – one for a woman with cancer and the other for a family adopted by that church who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina).

At least once, these two fabrics of prayer even intersected. Miller says her late husband, who was so proud of the tapestry, was given a prayer quilt by friends who got it from a local church. "He slept with it," Miller says. "I think it all works. I think it all has power."

This article appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune on October 6, 2005, and is reprinted here for the benefit of quilters interested in projects like these. This website gains no financial benefit from this publication or this project.

Penny Halgren
Penny is a quilter of more than 24 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

www.Rag-Quilt-Instructions.com
Fast, Fun and Funky Quilts

Web www.How-To-Quilt.com