Outside Inside

This year I have been really privileged to be given the chance to put my creative skills to good use in the prayer room at our  church. The prayer room is a very small space that used to be home to the baptismal font but when the church building was modernised the font was removed (don't know where it's gone though! I should ask. A small wooden movable font is used now). Anyway, the purpose of my creative spaces is to give the people who use the church building a different way to engage with their faith & a reflective space to ponder spiritual things. For Lent (the six weeks leading up to Easter) I thought it would be fun (!) to create a life size Easter Garden in the prayer room. I asked everyone I knew, as well as a lot of folk I didn't know, to lend me large house plants for the duration of Lent. I got many strange looks from the congregation who were puzzled by my idea to create a garden indoors!

I also collected newspapers from parents at school & saved the large cardboard box my new bike came in in order to transform the wooden table (seen in the first photo) into a large papier mache tomb, complete with a huge rolling stone! It took me about three mornings to make it & it was a lot of fun. the kids really enjoyed sitting inside it when I had finished it. Luke lay down in it to find out how Jesus felt when he was lying in the tomb that first Easter. I used black fabric to pin to the underneath of the table to make it seem more cave like. (Do click on the photos then you can see them bigger & as a little slide show of all of them together! How fun!)

I covered the prayer room floor with real bark chippings after taping bin bags & weed suppressant fabric to the carpet to protect it- which was rather boring & quite hard work!!

I added the houseplants & potted up lots of daffodils & primulas & other spring flowers to go around the room.

When I created the garden I wanted to help people prepare themselves for Easter & to think about renewing their walk with God. For the first few weeks of Lent my ideas for helping people interact with God were inspired by the Garden of Eden. There were two 'sations' (places to stop & think & pray). The first was a prayer pool where people were encouraged to think about things they would rather were not in their lives, or things that they hide from others (as Adam & Eve tried to hide from God in Genesis 3). As they thought about those things they would hold a pebble in their hand & then drop it into the water (with a satisfying SPLASH!) to signify letting go of those things & surrendering them to God as the water washed over the stone.

The second station was an apple tree. I hung lots of eating apples on the tree for people to 'pick'.

Each apple had a paper leaf on it with the words 'Taste & see that the Lord is good' from Psalm 34. the idea at this station was to think about all the good things in your life & to eat the apple as you really thought about how the apple smelt & tasted & so in turn to see how good God is! I was also really inspired by a chapter in CS Lewis's book The Magician's Nephew where he describes Digory's mother eating the apple from the Land of Youth as well as Revelation 2:7, 22:2 & 14 & Genesis 1-3.

During the second part of Lent I added two more stations to the garden, this time thinking about the Garden of Gethsemene, where Jesus went to pray after he had celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples & just before he was arrested & killed. The words of Graham Kendrick's song The Servant King which say 'there in the garden of tears my heavy load he chose to bear' inspired me here. I added a waterfall of tears & a painting that I did inspired by Psalm 56: 8 (you can read more about that here).

I sprinkled loads & loads of acrylic gems & glass nuggets over the fabric waterfall & put lots of glass containers & bowls out for people to symbolically collect their tears (or the tears of others) in the jars knowing that God cares for us more than we can understand & knows us better than we know ourselves. It was also a place to pray for situations & people around the world whose cries seem to go unheard (such as orphans or traffiked people).

My children especially enjoyed collecting the gems, nuggets & clear marbles into the various receptacles. It was great to see them interacting with the station & think about how much God cares for each of them.

I also created rain drops falling on the garden by using acrylic & glass beads strung from the ceiling with invisible thread (bit of a faff but well worth it for the final effect). Jordan wasn't sure how I was going to use invisible thread if I couldn't see it!

I made an audio effect (with Lee's help) of a rain storm & the song 'Singing in the Rain' which played on a loop in the prayer room. As people listened to the rain they could sit under the umbrella & ponder the different Bible verses I put on the wall about God refreshing us (Psalm 46:10, Isaiah 40:31, Hosea 6:3, Deuteronomy 32: 1-3, Isaiah 25:4, job 36:26- 30).

I love listening to the rain! And indoor rain really was lots of fun & therapeutic!

The Easter Garden was used as part of the Good Friday service at church too. The people who came to the service were given a pebble (it should have been a black piece of paper but I forgot them!) to throw into the tomb, symbolising them throwing away their sins & old nature & putting it to death as Jesus had been put to death on the cross. Then the stone was rolled over the entrance to the tomb & it was sealed shut. On Easter Sunday the tomb was 'miraculously' opened up with light streaming from it (our desk lamp & standard lamp from home carefully hidden with black organza!) & all the stones/sins were gone- risen with Christ in new life! Hooray!! :o)

I really, really enjoyed being able to let my imagination & creativity run wild in making the garden. It was really fulfilling, especially hearing all the comments from people who used the garden to pray & think in. It made it all worth while. My favourite comment was from an elderly lady who said to me with tears in her eyes that the garden was 'beautiful, just beautiful!' & another lady who was so moved by the Jars of Tears that she cried & cried as God spoke to her through it. I am so grateful to Lee for all his support in helping me to juggle looking after the kids & being arty. I could not have done it without him! Annie-Joy was also a great help to me watering the plants with me each week after morning prayers & setting out the gems & glass nugget 'tears' with me & generally helping me to set up all the little details that made the garden work. So although I was the one who put the garden together, it really was a team effort to create it. Thankyou to everyone who helped me in so many ways.