Creating a Prayer Chapel

A few weeks ago, my pastor asked me to create a prayer chapel for Lent.  I had been thinking about decorating the worship space in the front of the church, but my pastor had plans for that space.  Walking into the church on Ash Wednesday, we found a radically different space:

I've never created a prayer chapel, but I was game.  The space had some challenges:  robes are kept in a closet, and the room also has a bathroom, so it needs to be accessible to people who aren't there to pray.  It's been used for storage, but it could have been worse.  Here's what it looked like before I got started:

I moved some of the materials out of the way, and I set up the table that will function as an altar of sorts.  We don't have a kneeler that I know of, but this set up will work fine:

A card table covered in purple cloth becomes transformed:

I hung up some gauzy cloth to set the space apart.  I'm hoping that people who are praying or meditating will have a sense of privacy, while still allowing access to people who need to use the bathroom.

Here's how the table looks from above.  People can hold the meditation rocks and contemplate, or they can write prayers and leave them in the red jar.  They can simply read a prayer or devotion from the books I left there.

Here's a close up of the rocks.  I had great fun creating them:

I knew that people might want to take the rocks with them, but I didn't want to have to keep creating replacements.  So, I drew crosses on some glassy stones that I had left over from our fountain project.  People can take a glassy stone with them.

Tomorrow I'll post the sheet that I've left on the table to give people some guidance and instruction.