a priest's musings on the journey

with my sweety for 2 weeks... i probably won't get to blogging until the end of the month, unless i get particularly inspired...

peace y'all

Go < a href= http://videos.howstuffworks.com/reuters/7567-chinas-lucky-number-8-video.htm#>here< to learn more about why the number 8 is lucky according to Chinese Superstition. Apparantly, the superstition has caught on even here in the US, where hundreds are have planned their wedding for 08/08/08, including a wedding at which I will officiate tommorrow at 8:08 PM.

In Chinese the number 8 is pronounced in a similar way as the word prosperity (fa). So to get married on 08/08/08 is like getting married on fa,fa,fa- which is a lot of prosperity. (notice the Olympics will open on 08/08/08 at 8:08 as well...)

So fa and blessings to all the newlyweds

How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be,
The cries of fifty thousand killed
At the bottom of crushing darkness;


Through yellow smoke whirling into light,
Buildings split, bridges collapsed,
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers.
Soon after, skin dangling like rags;
With hands on breasts;
Treading upon the broken brains;
Wearing shreds of burn cloth round their loins;
There came numberless lines of the naked, all crying.
Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like jumbled stone images of Jizo;
Crowds in piles by the river banks,
loaded upon rafts fastened to the shore,
Turned by and by into corpses under the scorching sun;
in the midst of flame tossing against the evening sky,
Round about the street where mother and brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on.
On beds of filth along the Armory floor,
Heaps, and God knew who they were …
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed, with half their skin peeled off bald.
The sun shone, and nothing moved
But the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant ordure.
How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousands?
Amidst that calm,
How can I forget the entreaties
Of departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes,
Cutting through our minds and souls?

- Mitsuyoshi Toge
from Hiroshima-Nagasaki: A Pictorial Record of the Atomic Destruction (1978).

We continue to remember those who died on this day on 1945 when Hiroshima was attacked by the US. May God be merciful and grant peace to our world, so that acts of violence and war will cease as we are transfigured into the likeness of Christ.

O God, who on the holy mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thy well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may in faith behold the King in his beauty; who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

Luiz' final piece on his Lambeth Devotional art blog has to be my favorite, because it was a "collaborative" effort between Luiz and Zac. Zac sketched a cross on a canvas in June for a painting he intended to create for my mother, but being the perfectionist that he is, decided it was the wrong cross and left the canvas to create a new one for her (the one he gave her is a flowering cross set against a hill over which the sun is rising... alas I do not have a picture). Luiz took the used canvas and said he could use it somehow. The Cross of Life is the result of Luiz' additions to Zacs original sketch. Zac was elated to see it on Luiz' website, and to know that it had stood in a place of prayer at the Lambeth Conference. I think this will encourage him to continue with his own artwork.

Holy Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood, pray for us that we may be continiually inspired and empowered to proclaim the Gospel of Peace and to work for a just and peaceful world, so that God's will may be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

From the Living Church....

Seven martyred Melanesian brothers were added to the names in the Chapel of Saints and Martyrs of Our Own Time at Canterbury Cathedral during the closing Eucharist of the Lambeth Conference Aug. 3.

The seven members of the Anglican Religious Community of the Melanesian Brotherhood were killed by separatists in the Solomon Islands in 2003 while they were trying to serve as peacemakers in the conflict. Archbishop Ellison Pogo, primate of Melanesia, presided at the closing liturgy, which included hymns, anthems and readings in a variety of languages used throughout the Anglican Communion.

Following the post-communion prayer, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams received the names of the seven brothers at the location in the cathedral where Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket was murdered in 1170.

Beginning in the nave, members of the four religious communities of Melanesia chanted the Litany of the Saints and Martyrs of Melanesia as they slowly processed to the altar. The brothers and sisters wore soft-soled shoes or sandals so that their voices were the only sound echoing through the packed cathedral.

.....

What the Living Church did not report, nor any the other blogs that I have read about that evenings liturgy, was that on the altar where the names were recieved stood an icon of the 7 Martyrs of Melanesia, written by Luiz Coelho and given as a gift to the Melanesian Church. The icon has been blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, at the request of the Melanesian Church, will remain in the Chapel of Saints and Martyrs of Our Own Time so that pilgrims can know the story of the 7 Martyrs and add their prayers to the prayers of the martyrs and of all the church for peace in the world. Rumor says "the real story" of the liturgy can be read in the Church Times in days to come.... I'll keep you posted.



More on the martyrs can be found here and here