life verse prayer

This one encapsulates what I pray most for myself, and it comes from my favorite psalm. "Search me, o God, and know my anxious thoughts," comes from Psalm 139. I have returned to this psalm over and over, and it is a comfort and a plea--God knows every single detail of my existence, better than I know myself, and the plea is to help me understand where all these anxious thoughts are coming from. It ends with, "see if there is any offensive way within me, and lead me into life everlasting."

The bowl is formed of gold (probably brass) wire, letters in cursive that spiral out from the center. It's about 5 inches in diameter, and you can see how the shadows cast by the wire can make the letters more legible.

tiny prayer

This one's a little beaded crochet bowl, which is the first one I made. It's about 3 or 4 inches in diameter.

grief prayers

The inspiration for these comes from Romans 8:26-27
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

When I crochet, sometimes impossible knots form in the skein, and I spend many frustrating hours unraveling the mess. It's formless and chaotic, and many times it's unclear where it starts and ends. This is such a perfect parallel for difficult times, tragic experiences and depression. All one can see is the mess, the groaning and distress, yet we have hope because the Spirit gives those expressions a form, brings order from the chaos.

The bowls here are made from yarn unraveled from a sweater (and pieces of the same sweater). The smaller bowls are made with cotton weaving thread. I soaked the knotted mess in elmer's glue and draped each blob over a plastic bowl to dry. The insides retain the shape of the bowl, and the outsides are still rather messy. After all that, I spray-painted the bowls with gold.

celebration bowl

Here's a big happy prayer bowl, made from wire coated with gold cellophane stars (normally used for gift wrap and Christmas decorations). It's about 2 feet wide and 10 inches deep, my biggest one so far. It was a joy to make, except when the wire attachment pieces poked me...

Welcome!

Here's the idea: I was reading Revelation a few months ago, and the passage on the header stuck out like a beacon, the most stunning image. The idea--the surpassingly beautiful idea--that our prayers are, in God's eyes, golden bowls filled with incense, made me re-think the notion that our petitions to God are just humdrum, commonplace, and of little consequence. They are not stashed in burlap sacks in a heavenly warehouse, mouldering away in obscurity. Instead, prayers are treasured, lifted up in worship of Christ, and give off a heady aroma of holiness. Even the tiny prayers, the parking-space prayers and the late-for-work prayers are beautiful and they matter to God.

So, great, that's cool. But wouldn't it be amazing to see these prayers, here and now? To make them concrete, to express through materials and craftsmanship the myriad petitions and praises that come from a relationship with God?

I decided to do just that. So far, there are only a handful, but they're all very different, challenging, and so fulfilling to make. Each time I think about the project, more ideas come and more things to explore, more shiny material is available to me. But I don't want to keep this idea to myself.

I want to start something that can be done anywhere, just using this idea and some creativity (and a bit of gold leaf or spray paint!). It's not the "perfect" medium, but I thought this site would be good to get things moving, to inspire us all to work on our own golden bowls, to share photos of them, progress, scriptures and insights related to prayer. Eventually, and hopefully soon, I would love to bring all the bowls together for a large-scale installation, and/or do the following:

• have a prayer conference at a church, displaying the bowls, and giving the congregation an opportunity to make/display their own and meditate on the privilege of prayer.
• make prayer bowls related to a specific ministry, person, or idea, sell them and give the proceeds to benefit those people.
• transform a huge empty gallery with hundreds of bowls hanging, on pedestals, on the floor, and some brimming with incense.
• work on the bowls as we pray, bringing them into daily disciplines of scripture-reading and prayer for family and friends.
• the sky is the limit! so many more things can be explored!

If you want to be a part of this, email me at mk@ganap.com, and I'll put your info into Blogger so you can add your own posts to this one. You can insert pictures, video, scriptures, comments etc, all having to do with this project of course. Link us to your own art pages, flickr albums, church websites. Become a community of prayerful artists! Blessings and peace to you all. MaryKate, Baltimore, MD.