One of the best decisions we made when renovating the Rectory was to knock down three walls. Now I can sit in my prayer chair in the very front room and see all the way through the house to the back yard.  From the front of the house, I can watch a bevy of colored birds in my backyard feast from the bird feeder;  I can enjoy them snacking on my sunflowers which seem to grow with especially happy abandon this year. 

I never imagined that removing walls could  make such a difference.  I see beauty that I never saw when the walls blocked my view. 

My wide open spaces have made me reflect on other walls we build to separate us from others. 

I’ve thought for some time that building a wall along the border between the US and Mexico seemed silly. It feels like an awfully expensive way to make us feel safer–with little actual effect on security. My research has indicated that there are better and more efficient means of keeping our borders safe.  Since we aren’t proposing a wall built between us and Canada, I wonder if the US–Mexican  wall is more about separating us from people who look and speak differently from us.  

As I watched and read this past week’s news, it appears right now we may be in more danger from American citizens who want us only to welcome folks that look like them.  What wall keeps us safe from that separatism?

I’d personally rather spend wall money on health care for those of lesser means, especially women, children, and those of riper years. I’d rather make Texas known for it’s excellence in public education.  If we must build something, why not improve our bridges and roads?  That’s just a start of my instead of a wall list.   Some might say that I am veering into politics, but these ponderings are my response to those five baptismal vows I get to re-up on nearly every month during worship. 

Here’s a small way I’m living my baptismal covenant:  I’ve begun to knit a 40 inch wall. It will become part of an art installation in Chicago at the Smart Museum of Art. Knitters, quilters, crocheters have been invited to create forty inch squares for something called The Welcome Blanket Project.  The curators are hoping to receive 3200 squares to represent the proposed 2000 mile wall between Mexico and the United States.  After the exhibit, the squares will be given as blankets to refugees that are allowed entry into our wonderful country. 

Every stitch in my 40 inch square is a prayer.  I’m praying for God’s loving kindness and hospitality for us all.  I’m imagining walls coming down. I’m imagining us all seeing the beauty in one another that we miss when walls block our view. 

One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to find and walk labyrinths.  There is a great website that helps you locate labyrinths near you.  I’m still hoping that one day (soon!) we’ll build a labyrinth at St. Mary’s, and I’m always curious about how communities create labyrinths–there is a world of materials and designs.

• Outdoors beside the Stations of the Cross at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
• Outdoors at the Cancer Hospital of University of North Carolina Health Care (where I prayed for those fighting cancer, their health providers, and those who love and support them)
• Outdoors at another Episcopal Church in Chapel Hill that had been built as a scout project ten years before and not maintained; I could only walk to it, not on it because the path was no longer visible due to lack of care (I know, there’s a sermon there)
• Outdoors at Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham
• Indoors at Calvary Methodist Church

Each labyrinth had it’s own gift of prayer, but the one at Calvary was added as a recipient of the 24 Project,  the 24@ $100 giving mission I began in January in response to twenty four years of priesthood. The project will be coming to a close later this month in anticipation of my next project in celebration of twenty five years of ordination to the [transitional] diaconate.