Especially on Pentecost, Episcopalians see the dove as a messenger of renewal and peace. At the Church of the Holy Comforter, a dove soars full-time above the sacred worship area. Artists created it by painstakingly placing hundreds of tiny colored pieces of glass by hand — and persuading others to try — to beautify and support mental health.

“I love the fact how it came together, because now we can sit in this in the sanctuary and say, ‘Oh, my piece of glass is up there,’ which means you have a part,” said Renee Adams, one of the lead mosaic artists.

“People love to be a part of something. They love to belong, to be just tossed out. To the side. They love not being just thrown to the wind, put out of houses, put out places because of a diagnosis, because the diagnosis is just something that the doctor gives you. It’s not what you are, right?”

For two months during Lent 2026, Adams and Kraig Patrick led the mosaic creation through the parish’s twice-weekly Healing Through the Arts program. The design began with a T-shirt with a dove on it, that they enlarged, and glass pieces only one-quarter inch. They worked with fellow artists who are navigating mental health challenges and life’s hardships, who show up to create, connect, and feel seen, heard and valued. Almost 80 people placed the mosaic pieces.

“It’s just mind blowing that everyone came together, and we were able to create the dove, and it opened a lot of it opened everyone’s minds to what’s possible and what a lot of people can do,” Patrick said. “We’re able to do anything when we put our minds to it, and that’s what brought us all to come together.”

On Palm Sunday, when the mosaic was blessed in view of a standing room crowd, Vicar Matt Babcock acknowledged the profound meaning of the dove.

“There is a piece of each one of you in that, and the question of how we see God in this place, we see God in the brokenness that is our world, that you all together knit into something beautiful for the sake of beauty because the Lord needs it,” he said. “One of the things we get to do in this place together, is we heal ourselves through art, through beauty, through growing things, through being community, and being love in this world.”

Filling the Gaps

Established in 1893 near Grant Park, Holy Comforter is a community ministry of the Diocese of Atlanta, addressing neighborhood needs and issues of poverty, social justice, and advocacy.

Holy Comforter established the Friendship Center in 1987 to serve adults who are marginalized by mental illness, disability, and poverty, many of whom attend church at Holy Comforter. The Friendship Center’s mission is to be a day program providing an inclusive community of recovery for adults living with severe and persistent mental illness. Over 500 meals are provided every week. People are fed and also connected to social workers, and nurses come every single week providing care that includes foot clinics. There is also a clothing shelter and food shelter.

“We really take seriously the idea that we respect the dignity of all people,” Babcock said. “So, when they show up, they are not required to do anything. They are allowed to do anything they choose. They can participate in yoga. They can work in an organic garden. They can work in our arts program, where their skills are encouraged and assisted, and they produce some of the most beautiful work.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, the Friendship Center at Holy Comforter transforms into a space where art bridges the gap between isolation and belonging. Healing Through the Arts offers hands-on practices encouraging mindfulness, from feather-making to clay, sculpture, and watercolor. And the mosaic.

“Would you love to put a piece of glass in on our mosaic piece we’re hanging behind the altar?” was a typical invitation from Patrick and Adams to anyone passing by their work area.

Brokenness and Wholeness

Patrick, 40, came to the Friendship Center through a case manager after a monthlong hospitalization. “I’ve been doing art my whole life, and I took art classes in college, and I stopped for a while,” he said. “A series of events happened, like depression.”

While this community fits him, showing up is not automatic for everyone going through mental struggles. Sometimes those struggles keep people from joining and making art. But the door remains open.

“You know, people may be maybe ostracized because of mental illness,” he said. “Some won’t come here to Friendship Center. Community is inclusion and the Friendship Center and Holy Comforter are about everyone is welcome.”

Adams, 60, recalled living in a group home after experiencing a traumatic event that led to a nervous breakdown. There she heard about the Friendship Center. A poetry writer, she began journaling in therapy and started sewing at the Friendship Center. Glass did not interest her.

“Fast forward five years, and I’m cutting glass and teaching mosaics,” said Adams, who serves as an instructor at the Allan Folk School at Camp Mikell. “I love to see the pieces come together. And then I also love seeing people learn. I love learning and developed the ability to learn how to adapt. Now I have my own tools, my own glass, and I’m seeing mosaic pieces in nature and people’s clothes. Because I love patterns and I love to see them come together.”

Steady support for the mosaic came from a volunteer couple with deep experience with stained glass, Nancy Brockway and Ethel Wright, members of Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church. The dove features glass with a rough texture to resemble feathers “and it’s the hardest glass I’ve ever cut in 50 years,” Brockway said. “At one point I had Band-Aids on eight fingers.”

Recovery from mental illness can be an unclear path. Making the dove was like that too. Artists worked on sections that were later put together to make the whole. “When we put the sections together, that’s when it actually started looking like a dove,” she added.

For Wright, mental illness became more personal through a relative’s struggles. She has volunteered at the Friendship Center for 15 years.

“I’ve never known what anybody’s diagnosis was, nor did I care,” she said. “What has been so beautiful is they are people who have so much potential and so much artistic creativity that this gives them a chance to bring that out. And I think that’s probably better than all the pills you can take.”

Vulnerable People Under Attack

Babcock recently became the vicar at Holy Comforter after serving for about two years at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, a well-resourced church about 4 miles north established even earlier (1864). Babcock felt a clear call to serve at Holy Comforter after witnessing that work firsthand.

“I knew what they did on paper, and I knew that it was important at a soul level, but until I saw it and felt it, I don’t know that I really understood the depth of just how critical, just how vital that ministry is, especially today,” he said.

A significant percentage of the congregation live with persistent mental illness and include those on the verge of being unhoused or who already are. Holy Comforter, as its name implies, serves as a safe space, “to wrap our arms around them and make sure that they’re getting everything that they need to be supported,” he said.

The dove mosaic represents hope and peace despite the increasing persecution that Babcock puts bluntly: “I cannot underscore all the ways that our government is attacking vulnerable people that live at the poverty level or below, who struggle on a weekly basis to get food. That is a sin. There’s no reason that anyone should have to work that hard to survive.”

In a guest sermon at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Babcock reflected on people who are pushed to the margins, ostracized and “othered,” and encouraged people to fight stigma and assumptions about people who are stigmatized.

“There is such a power when we just acknowledge vulnerably what is happening around us. When we speak to it, when we give it a name, when we interrupt the things that tell us that we might not be enough for whatever reason,” he said. “All sorts of people who come through our doors know a great deal about so many things and teach us what it is to be alive.”

I Can Make Something Out of That

Like a collaborative art project, worship at Holy Comforter is interactive and participatory. An unexpected comment or conversation during a sermon is not only accepted but embraced. The community exemplifies the diocesan mission to challenge ourselves and the world to love like Jesus as we worship joyfully, serve compassionately, and grow spiritually.

The Palm Sunday service included a meandering parade with brass accompaniment. Bishop Rob Wright preached a resurrection message that imagined God responding to the lynching of his son, “I can make something out of that.”

“What keeps me from losing my hope and giving into despair is realizing that nothing is impossible for God,” he said.

The highlight of the service was his blessing of the dove mosaic:

“O God, creator of all things, source of all beauty, bless this work of art created by your servants to enhance worship in this place. May it not merely occupy space, but open hearts to your presence. As we look upon it, may we see glimpses of your beauty, your goodness, and hear echoes of your truth. Bless the hands and minds that created it, and may this offering turn our hearts towards you, the supreme artist of the universe, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”