Covering the power of healing with shawls

WESTMINSTER, Md. " Vivian Haughee draped the bright green prayer shawl over her shoulders and wrapped it around her body. Then she clutched her arms together over the shawl in a warm embrace. Whatever healing powers the knitted garment possessed, they weren't about to escape.

"My heart is so full I feel like crying, not tears of sorrow but tears of joy," said Haughee, 64, after receiving the prayer shawl in her room at Carroll Hospital Center, where she was being treated for fibromyalgia.

She was among the first recipients of the hospital's prayer shawl ministry, which was launched by its spiritual care and volunteer services departments in February to offer holistic care. The ministry speaks to the belief that spirituality can aid medicine and treatment in the healing process.

The shawls are knitted, crocheted and quilted by hand by hospital volunteers and staff as well as members of local churches and retirement communities. The shawl makers pray for the anonymous recipient while crafting the shawl, and each comes with a card explaining that it is to be used as "a source of physical, emotional and spiritual comfort and support."

As of this week, there had been 61 shawls crafted, and 20 patients had received them. Carroll Hospital Cente

The Rev. Judy Strayer, the hospital chaplain who gave Haughee her prayer shawl, said that because of limited supply, shawls are given primarily to patients with severe illnesses or to family members of such patients. They are given regardless of religious affiliation. Thus far, Strayer said, no one has refused a shawl.

The Carroll Hospital ministry was started by volunteer hospital chaplain Susan Crowley of Westminster, a student at Baltimore's St. Mary's Seminary and University. In search of a project during her last semester, she got the idea while visiting a patient at a hospital in York, Pa.

"Whenever I visited her, she always had it wrapped around her," Crowley said. She said that the woman repeatedly expressed comfort knowing that "strangers were praying for her."

Crowley petitioned the hospital as well as senior and retirement centers for volunteer crafters. About 50 women signed up.

"We tell patients that someone in the community made it for them with hands and hearts joined together in prayer," Crowley said.

"The funny thing is about 25 years ago I dabbled a little in crochet, and when I read about the ministry ... I began working on a prayer shawl. But it takes time to finish them."

Mary Jane Cheeks of Westminster is completing her first shawl, resuming a crocheting hobby after a 20-year absence.

"They're supposed to be 2 feet wide and 60 inches long, which is long enough to cover the back," Cheeks said. She added that the process of praying for the anonymous recipient has been beneficial to her as well.

"I say some prayers from my religion; I'm Catholic," she said. "But it's not just religious thinking; sometimes you wish the person well like you would someone you know. I meditate, and in a way it takes stress away from me, and I hope that in turn that what I'm doing will help someone."

For Haughee, the ministry has come full circle. She once crafted prayer shawls for adult patients and blankets for infants at hospitals while serving at a nearby church.

"I always try to do something for somebody, and I found out that there was such a ministry," Haughee said. To finally be the recipient of a shawl, she said, "puts a crowning moment on everything I've been through. This is what life is about; it's about giving. When you do receive back, it just makes that so much greater."