The Hospital Sisters Health System now has visual testaments to the diversity of its ministry, in the form of two newly created art quilts with each block representing one of its hospitals or affiliates.
Each of the health system's 13 hospitals, as well as its physician groups, foundation and cardiovascular center created two identical quilt blocks — one for each quilt — and provided them to the system office to form the "Threads of Our Community" quilts. One of them is on display at the system headquarters in Springfield, Ill., and the other is on traveling display at its facilities.
"Those seeing the finished product are touched by the diversity and by the cohesion of the whole," said Sr. Monica Laws, OSF, vice president of mission integration for Hospital Sisters. "It is a visual representation of our desire to be one in Christ. Our hospitals are eager to have an opportunity to display the quilt."
Sr. Laws helped to organize and coordinate the quilt project. She explained that the idea arose during a Franciscan Formation session two years ago. The group had been discussing an interaction between the Hospital Sisters' patron, St. Francis of Assisi, and Muslim Sultan Melek-el-Kamel in the 1200s. The two men found that they could respect each other's faith. "With that story as our starting point, we looked at the diversity in our health care ministry today," including the diverse faiths and cultures represented among hospital patients, families, colleagues and clinicians, Sr. Laws explained.
"We wanted some way to bring the truth of the story … into our Hospital Sisters Health System reality today," Sr. Laws said. "The quilt became our way of expressing the culture of our hospitals today."
The leadership formation sessions, which involve representatives from throughout the system, take place three times each year. In a fall 2010 session, Sr. Laws gave one leader from each facility a Ziploc bag with quilting directions and some quilting supplies. The leaders then returned to their facilities and involved their facilities' mission departments in generating ideas for the block and soliciting quilters. Some facilities involved small groups in developing the blocks, some allowed anyone at their hospital to create blocks, and then they chose one design to submit for the project.
Leaders returned to a spring 2011 session with their blocks, and Sr. Laws engaged professional quilters in Springfield to piece the blocks together and do the quilting.
The block from St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay, Wis., has symbols representing friendship, diversity, communication and St. Francis' reverence for nature. Green and gold represent the importance of the Green Bay Packers football team to that city's culture. The block from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Belleville, Ill., uses photo transfers of the healing hands of staff working in the ministry. Some hospitals harvested scrap materials from around their facilities for use in their blocks. The block from St. John's Hospital in Springfield includes fabrics from uniforms, linens and handkerchiefs. Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wis., created a design called the "Seasons of Caring" to represent how the hospital cares for people in the spring, summer, fall and winter of their lives.
"Each block by itself makes a statement, but as a whole it says together we can do so much more than any one alone," Sr. Laws said. "Just as the blocks have balancing colors and stitch patterns to unify the whole, we have our mission, our Franciscan tradition and the heritage of the Hospital Sisters."