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Prayer Wheel Uses : Healing the Earth
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Prairie Restoration
The Franciscan Sisters of Wheaton, Illinois, commissioned this large prayer wheel to celebrate their community's restoration work of a Midwest Prairie. Botanical illustrations of prairie plants such as milkweed and purple coneflower, and animals such as fox, dragonfly, cardinal, and an extinct bison hidden in a sky of billowing clouds – remind us of the beauty and diversity found in our once vast prairies. People holding hands, doing a circle dance around the wheel's base, represent the community of people who helped restore what our ancestors once believed stretched for an eternity.
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Pipeline Explosion: Community Healing Wheel
In 1999 tragedy struck in my hometown of Bellingham, Washington. A gas pipeline explosion roared through a pristine creek valley and engulfed part of a public parkland. It killed two young boys and a teen. It also destroyed a swath of forest and a rehabilitated salmon stream. In the few golden hours before the explosion, the boys were doing what boys do – horsing around in a beautiful wooded park called Whatcom Falls.
Whatcom Creek was a magical place indeed. It was a creek musical enough for waterfalls and deep enough for swimming, wild enough for otters and meditative enough for casting a fly line across blurring leaf-green current. It was the kind of place I played in when I was a kid. It never occurred to me – or most of us families with active, outdoor-loving kids – what dangers flow through seemingly serene landscapes.
When the pipeline exploded, I was standing a mile or so away in another public park – Lake Padden – right on top of the same pipeline. Ink-black smoke rose over the horizon. Everyone was panicked.
The awful pipeline calamity moved me to sculpt a memorial "story" on the outside of a three-foot-tall clay cylinder. Without knowing, I created my first prayer wheel. Later, the wheel was mounted on a revolving stand at an outdoor gallery, Big Rock Garden. It soon became a vessel for people to place thoughts and prayers inside on pieces of paper. Ever since, my clay work has taken a different direction.
