South Church Knitting Ministry
South Church has been blessed to have a Knitting Ministry, also known as the “Prayer Shawl Ministry”, since the late 1990's. This group of women creates warm hand-knitted shawls, known as “prayer shawls”. They are knitted with prayer, then blessed with a prayer by the Knitting Ministry members, and are prayerfully given to individuals in need to solace due to illness or death of a loved one.
We will be meeting the first Sunday of every month at 11:30, in the back of the sanctuary. Please join us! If you would like to get more information, contact Carol Cole, Mical Allopena, Marie O'Brien, or Dot Chorlian.
Below are the three important prayers of the Knitting Ministry: the first is the prayer we speak as we gather together before we knit in community, the second is the prayer we use to bless a completed prayer shawl. and the third is the prayer which is given along with a shawl to a person in need of solace.
Gathering Prayer and Blessing
By: Cathleen O'Meara Murtha, DW - 2004 (adapted)
As we gather in community to share our prayer, our stories, the work of our hearts and hands, we pray for God's blessing on our endeavors:
A blessing to my mind – to be free to enter this time of contemplative activity...
A blessing to my hands – to be the source of creating something of beauty and love...
A blessing to my soul – to be open to the promptings of loving and caring...
A blessing to my yarn – to be shaped into patterns of loving and caring...
A blessing to my needles – to be the holders of stitches as they become a whole garment...
A blessing to my knitting – to be a work of heart and hands, body and spirit...
A blessing on the one who will receive the fruit of my prayer and my knitting...
May this shawl be welcomed in the spirit in which it was knitted...
May we become one with the One who knitted each of us in our mother's womb...
I join my blessing, my prayer and my knitting with people all over the earth in this common effort to bring healing and wholeness, comfort and celebration.
Prayer of Blessing (blessing for a completed shawl)
By: Janet Bristow - 2000
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!
Prayer from the Knitting Ministry
In the beginning, Creating Spirit, you formed my being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. To my flesh and blood you gave the breath of life. O Loving One,
renew me this day in love. Grant me light to journey by: grant me hope to sustain me.
Spirit of life and death and love, be with me and all those who need comfort. And be with all those who care for and support us. May your gentle touch reach out to all the hurting people and places in the world.
May this mantle knit in love be a sign of your healing Presence. May it surround me when I am weary, may it encircle me when I am in pain. May I dance with it in the sunshine and cover myself with it in the rain. And may I know the love, care and healing power which is knit into every stitch.
Your shawl is hand knit by the South Church Knitting Ministry