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 shawl 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 Center recently held a blessing service for the shawls and those who crafted them in its Multifaith Chapel.
The Rev. Judy Strayer, the Carroll Hospital chaplain who gave Haughee her prayer shawl, said that due to 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 prayer shawl.
The shawls come in an array of colors and fabrics; most are either triangular or rectangular.
Prayer shawls have been used for years throughout the world in churches, organizations of various denominations. Several crafters have published books about them. In Judaism, prayer shawls, called talliths, are worn by male Jews during the daily morning service. An Internet site (shawlministry.com) offers instructions on how to make a prayer shawl and features prayer shawl patterns.
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 for a project during her last semester, she got the idea while visiting a patient at a hospital in York, Pa.
