Prayer Wall through a Pandemic

The Laurel Heights Prayer Wall has been in place at the corner of Belknap and Woodlawn since Easter 2020, just weeks after we were displaced from our sanctuary by Covid-19. Ann and Mike McGlone and Genny and Nick Campbell assembled it early that morning. Since that Easter Sunday on which we brought the church outdoors in such a beautiful way, countless people have paused to pray at that corner, tying a ribbon onto a metal lattice to represent their prayer. Every few weeks those ribbons have been carefully removed from the prayer wall by Liz Escamilla and others and placed on the altar table in Scott Chapel, with new ribbons supplied in wicker basket at the wall. You may recall that we brought those colorful ribbons from Scott Chapel into the sanctuary last year during the month of October.

The Prayer Wall has been a portal through which countless people have experienced God—some for whom this was perhaps their first invitation to pray in this way; and during Covid possibly their only avenue for shared prayer.

On Holy Saturday, April 16^th at 3:00 p.m. the Prayer Wall will be decommissioned. Ribbons from the wall will be gathered and arranged into a display for the bulletin board outside Scott Chapel. We have commissioned Karon O’Ferrall for this project. The display, which will be installed in late spring, will serve as a reflection piece, representing one specific dimension of our life together during the pandemic.

We give thanks for the Prayer Wall, and those who tended it; for the many who found their way to it during a difficult time; and for the prayers of lament and hope, gratitude and mercy, fear and assurance, remembrance and longing, intercession and celebration represented across two years by the ribbons tied to its latticework. May God continue to hold these prayers, and those who offered them, in mercy, love, and grace.

Paul