The following letter and project was awarded a grant from the Kresge Community Arts Foundation.  As a result, the tile "spirit" wall is being built.

To take refuge from the many struggles of daily existence for even a moment can uplift the human heart to its higher potential of endurance, peace, and temperance.  The creation of places and symbols of refuge is the great need we at the Detroit Zen Center perceive in our community.  How can we help foster the quality of peace in the hearts and minds of our world and our selves?  We are committed to resolving this question.

 Please allow us to provide an historical background of our proposed cultural art project:  Throughout the ancient mountain monasteries of Korea, temple walls and rooftops are built from clay tiles.  Often, each of the thousands upon thousands of tiles bear inscriptions hidden on the underside of the tile, made by passers by or monks who were present during time of construction.  These inscriptions may be a poem or prayer, may bear a person’s name, or may bear the name of someone they love or had loved. It is the belief that these roofs and walls of tile with their collective inscriptions form a kind of protection of the human spirit, for the buildings and inhabitants they shelter, for the temple grounds, and for a protection that extends infinitely out toward all of humanity.

 Here in Hamtramck, the community of the Detroit Zen Center endeavors to erect a wall of refuge.  8 years ago, the Zen Center along with fellow workers from the local Bosnian community removed, piece-by-piece, historic mission tiles, from an estate being re-roofed in Grosse Pointe.  Over 4,200 tiles were carefully pulled off and passed hand-to-hand, stacked into the beds of trucks, transported and re-stacked at the back of the Center’s peace garden, where they have  patiently waited for years to be of use again.  Neighbors, mostly children across a broad ethnic spectrum, helped stack the tiles by forming lines from the pickup beds to the peace garden.  This was initiated organically.  People simply saw the tiles being unloaded day after day, and curious, came over to help.

 Eight years later, the mission tiles have a unique mission: to be mortared into a beautiful wall, surrounding the Zen Center grounds, standing as a symbol of refuge.  Rather than functioning as a boundary between the Zen Center and the community, the wall will stand just tall enough, approximately 3-4 feet, to create a sense of protection and beauty for the visitors who come to the Center’s numerous public activities and café, and stand also as a public display of rustic beauty, and a refuge to all who see it.  Highly visible in its location, wrapping the corner of an avenue that is highly trafficked by both pedestrians and drivers, all who pass by will easily see over the wall into the gardens and green-roofed entryway of the Zen Center.  In and of itself, this wall of refuge will hold direct, rich ties to the practices of reclamation, re-use, and respecting the past.  Yet the spirit of the wall will carry a subtler, perhaps more noble layer in its erection:

 In building the wall, neighbors and members of the community at-large will be invited to inscribe one of the 4,200 tiles, with a poem, prayer, wish or name.  We intend to accomplish this by well-organized invitation, having received verbal support for the project from city and community leaders.  Two neighborhood artists will help with the wall design, and one will contribute a peace sculpture for the adjoining garden. Set aside a weekend in mid-October, 2009 for the activity of inscription to be facilitated on-site in a very public display.  Passers-by will be invited to inscribe, too.  Afterward, two skilled Bosnian stone-wall builders (now in Hamtramck) together with skilled monks from the Zen Center will schedule act as head laborers in building the wall.  All will be welcome to participate in preparing the foundation, mortar, and laying the tiles.  A weekend will be scheduled for the tile inscriptions, then 7 working days to dig and lay the foundations and tile.  Numerous artists and laborers have offered help in the wall building.  The tiles were initially donated to the Zen Center by the estate owner where they were reclaimed.

 Significantly, the tiles themselves are already inscribed.  Back in 1916, the artists who made and baked the tiles painstakingly engraved the day’s date on each one prior to placing it in the oven.  The tiles bear dates ranging from 1-10-1916 to 1-21-1916. 

 By building this wall of refuge, we hope to offer refuge and protection to the spirit of all who come to or pass by the Zen Center, and to our entire community.  Rather than fight against the challenges we inevitably face in our urban environment, we hope to create an alternative:  spaces of refuge and protection within it.  Thank you for this opportunity to share our vision of what we feel would help serve the ever-growing needs of our local neighborhood and its people.