Folded prayers

In March 2017 we folded origami cranes in worship. We invited Janet Aisawa a dancer, choreographer and performer to teach and help us. We took several pews from our sanctuary and put in tables and chairs around them. While folding origami cranes we experienced that prayer can have different forms.
    This was a form of prayer for Sadako Sasaki who died of leukemia in 1955 as a consequence of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. In the Japanese culture origami is indeed a religious practice and art.
    Not everyone is good with words or public spoken prayers. Origami is different. It is about calmly folding and creasing paper step by step and at the end, blowing up the crane, giving it a three-dimensional form and thus bringing it to life. It certainly has spiritual calming and a reassuring dimension.
    And our cranes which we had folded in March made it all the way to Hiroshima. Janet Aisawa took them there for the annual remembrance of the bombing on the 6th of August.
    Although this Sunday we will not be folding cranes, in close proximity to anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing, we will learn from Jesus how to subdue and overcome our current religious, racial and national prejudices.