Sabbatical wrap up part 3 (?)

I've lost track of my wrap up efforts.  Being back in "real life" suddenly drags you in many different directions.  I need to slow down and re-find some of my discipline.  The good news is that at least now I know where to look.

Part of my project was to create some aids for personal prayer.  It's hard sometimes (at least for me) to find that quiet place for prayer when there's so much craziness around.  Riffing on an idea I'd seen elsewhere I came up with the idea of "Portable Holy Space".  The roots for this idea are actually quite old.  People would set up worship spaces in their homes, from a simple corner right up to a personal chapel.  Doing that in the 21st Century is not a bad idea but since we are much more on the go than years gone by I wanted to look at ideas that could go with us.  So I came up with the following "prototypes"

Here's how they started:

   The larger two are just simple wooden boxes from a craft store.  The largest is about 13 inches wide.  The two smaller ones are mint tins.  Everything got sanded down and painted/stained.

I'm just sharing the two smaller ones today.  I haven't gotten photos of the larger ones yet.  In fact the largest still needs a couple details to be finished.  Hope to have them soon.

Here's what the exterior of the two tins look like now.  Painted flat black because I didn't want them to get a lot of attention when in stored mode.  All the painting was done with spray paint bought at the local hardware store.  There were upsides and downsides to that technique.  Since I was learning as I went plus I wanted to create things that would be easily replicable I went with the simplest solutions.

Here's the interior of the larger tin.  This is the most personal of the projects.  About a year ago I was involved in a the CREDO program supported by the Pension Fund of the Episcopal Church.  Around that time I suddenly was surrounded by Julian of Norwich.  Her reminder that All will be well has been a touchstone for me since.  So I wanted to bring all those elements together.  You can just see that there is a small black stone leaning on the lower edge below the icon.  It reads "CREDO" as a reminder of that wonderful time and as the classic term for belief.  The prayer shawl that it sits on was a gift from a friend from CREDO (Thanks Laura!).  Like children and youth ministry you're not supposed to have favorites but this is mine.

This is the smallest of the PHS, meant to be small enough to slip into a pocket or even the smallest purse.  It's barely 3 inches tall.  I had two major problems doing this one.  First the paint on the flame just would not sit flat.  After three attempts I realized I actually kind of liked the crackle effect and so left it.  The other problem was gluing the cord for the cross.  I had hot glue to work with and you can see that it never quite worked cleanly.  Since I took this picture several suggestions have been made to improve it and I'll probably try a different kind of glue just to clean up the look.  The cross is one I received at the Episcopal Youth Event and it hangs freely in the space.  The concept I think is a total success.  Still need a little work on the execution.

As I said I haven't finished the larger box which I decided to going in a completely different direction.  Again the concept I think was great the execution will be better the next time I try one.  The smaller box is very simple and straight forward.  Photos of them soon.

Peace