Tag: Iran

We are Paper Cranes

Paper Cranes at the Hiroshima Childrens’ memorial, Japan
Photo by Gill Henwood

My friend, Gill, is touring Japan at present and has sent me photos of a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

Whilst there she was able to share in the practice of making Origami Cranes (Orizuru). This is a traditional Japanese craft of paper-folding symbolizing hope, peace and healing.

It became linked with the Childrens’ Memorial at Hiroshima through the inspiration of Sadako Sasaki, a 12 year old girl who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Japan by the USA, but who later died from leukemia. She was encouraged by a Japanese legend that folding 1,000 cranes grants a wish. When she was suffering and facing death she folded the paper cranes and this became a global icon for peace and the inspiration for the Children’s Peace Monument.

A Monument in the Peace Park is entitled ‘Atomic Bomb Children’. It was designed by Kazuo Kikuchi and Kiyoshi Ikebe, using money raised by Japanese school children. The figure of Sadako Sasaki is on the top and a boy and girl at the sides. Sadako holds a wire crane above her head. Behind the Statue are glass cases containing paper cranes.

Sadako’s wish, when making the paper cranes, was doubtless of personal healing, but her greater wish was to have a world without nuclear weapons.

When Gill and friends made their paper cranes they left behind a statement common to thousands of visitors of a desire for a world without nuclear war.

This desire is in forefront in many minds just now as we try to live with Global upheaval threatening the whole human race. Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan are names that easily trip off the tongue but are easily forgotten when other struggles take up the media’s attention. Even the struggle between Israel, the USA and Iran have become linked with whether the cost of petrol might spoil our Easter holiday! Humanity is sadly fickle and can be self seeking. Yesterday Holy Week began with the ‘Hosannas’ of Palm Sunday but how quickly that moved to ‘Crucify Him!’ by Good  Friday.

It is often hard to fathom human motives.

We know that the regime in power in Iran is a danger and threat to the world (not least to its own oppressed people!) It might therefore be a justification by Mr Trump and his ally in Israel for the action they are undertaking.  Yet there appear to be other motives which are drawing humanity to the kind of brink we saw in mid-1930’s Germany.

Perhaps the difficulty in trying to see similarities between the Nazi era and now is that it is far more complex. Too many vested interests are swirling around a vortex of demonic activity. To me, this feels like Satan’s time and it isn’t clear who are his agents. It would be wise, I feel, to remind ourselves of the events of August 6th 1945 and take heed.

It is always much easier to make war than it is peace and easier still to use God and religion to justify it but there are consequences leading from this which are not always taken into account. For example, the World Economy and resultant poverty and anxiety.

So, yesterday’s warning by Pope Leo is pertinent. Speaking during the Palm Sunday Mass, he said:

“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war but rejects them.”
He lamented the many wounds of the human family in our world today, as people cry out to God with the “painful groans of all those who are oppressed by violence and are victims of war.”
“Christ, King of Peace, cries out again from His cross: God is love! Have mercy! Lay down your weapons!  Remember that you are brothers and sisters!” said the Pope.     [source:Vatican News]

In this Holy Week of the Christian Church we are therefore reminded how Jesus confronted the evil, which so easily grips humanity, with the power of God’s Love.  John’s Gospel makes it very clear that the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a Victory. It is a Victory of Love over all that is unlove (sin) in the world. It is also a victory in which God’s plan for all of Creation is renewed by a deep outpouring of total freely given Love. That seems to run counter to the way human beings seem to be behaving. However, the paper cranes have a message too. They only happen when they are fashioned and made in that chosen image of peace. So, a renewed humanity only happens when we are fashioned and remade not with paper but with the love of God. 

As Professor John Barton, in his book, Love Unknown, says, Christians share Christ’s victory through sharing his … vocation to be the love of God for a fallen world, and like him going out to embody God whatever the cost.

In her own way that is what Sadako Sasaki achieved, So may we.

[Mr G and Gill Henwood]
30th March 2026

Fleeing by night

They fled by night. Sculpture by Josefina de Vasconcellous, Carmel Priory, Lake District. Photo by Mr. G

Yesterday I shared worship with the folk at St Mary, Little Hallingbury, on the edge of Hatfield Forest.There I met three newcomers in the congregation. They are young men who are refugees from Iran.
They are Christian converts and hope to be baptized in the New Year.

Yesterday’s Gospel was the Annunciation to Joseph.
It is that part of St Matthew which comes after the genealogy – that strange but amazing introduction to Matthew’s version of the Gospel, which takes us through the family tree of God’s people, stretching back to Abraham, the Father of the Nations. Abraham, links the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He also provides a link to King David and then to Joseph.

Joseph is vital to God’s plan for the salvation of the world and so it was important that his doubts about marrying Mary, who was by then with child, were addressed.
Matthew therefore reported on the visit by an Angel, probably Gabriel. (Matthew 1: 18 – 25)

The significance of Joseph and his link with the three Iranian men I met yesterday, comes a little later in the Christmas narrative.

After the birth of Jesus we are presented with the suffering of the Holy Innocents and the death edict  pronounced by King Herod the puppet king, collaborator to the Roman Occupiers. In Matthew Chapter 2 we are told of the visit of the Magi, the Wise men. Searching, they said for the one who had been born ‘king of  the Jews’ they met Herod who fearfully jealous ordered the death of all children under the age of 2.

Once again, an angel came to Joseph and this led to him taking an action which places him central to Jesus’s story. Often destined to be regarded as the ‘man in the background’, Joseph had a vital part to play in the mission of God to bring salvation to the world. He was there to protect, overshadow and care for God’s Holy Jesus.

He was to take him with Mary to safety in Egypt.

One of my favourite artists is Josefina de Vasconcellos, who was a sculptor.  Her Christian name is the feminine form of Joseph.
She carved a number of Crib seasons in which Joseph is enfolding Mary and the babe, in a posture of loving protection.
But there is another of her statues that speaks to me of the depth of Joseph’s care. It is called, They fled by night, and you can see it in Cartmel Priory in the Lake District. It is of the flight by the Holy Family into Egypt

In Josephina’s sculpture, The Holy Family are in mid-journey and it is night. Mary is exhausted and lies back drained of all energy. Joseph supports her, cradling her in his arms. He is protecting her with love and care. Meanwhile, the child is spread over her legs, his face forward, full of energy which comes from the security of being in the care of loving parents. He seems eager to go on and embrace his future and all that it will bring.

But for a moment, poised in space and time, Joseph holds his beloved ones in rest and care as he takes them away from danger and ministers to their needs.

As I think about this sculpture and the Gospel it portrays I think particularly of one startling truth which has a deeply contemporary meaning.The moment that Josefina captures in They fled by night’  is of Jesus as a ‘Refugee’. He is fleeing the danger and the tyranny being wrought in his homeland. It is the first time that Jesus was cast in the role of an outcast. Of all the people of history and in our modern times, he knew totally what it meant to be travelling away from danger, homeless and with no certainty of what life had in store for him at that moment.


For Josefina, her statue was more than capturing a moment of Gospel story. It was of seeing that as representing the plight of all refugees.
Yesterday we considered what that meant in a week where yet more of God’s children drowned in the English Channel being duped by traffickers who promised them safety.  Just a few minutes ago it was ruled by Judges that His Majesty’s Government can ship unwanted refugees to Rwanda passing the ‘problem’ to others.

This context, part of a huge migration of people across the earth, brings home to us a truth that millions are living in uncertainty, fear and despair.
For every one of them and for those of us responsible for their care, we need to hold on to this truth –  Jesus was a Refugee.!

That raises a huge question. As I talked with the three men from Iran yesterday, who were being watched over and loved by local Christians, what is my responsibility and yours. Joseph willingly accepted his. If we don’t do the same then what are we saying to God? What are we saying about God.

Because rejecting refugees means we are in danger of turning our backs on one who in Josefina’s Sculptured words, fled by night.

[Mr G]

Prayer for Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers

God, no one is stranger to you,
and no one is ever far from your loving care.
In your kindness watch over migrants, refugees and asylum seekers,
those separated from their loved ones, those who are lost,
and those who have been exiled from their homes by violence and war.
Bring them safely to the place where they long to be,
and help us always  to show your kindness to strangers and those in need.
We ask this through Christ our Lord, who was also a refugee and migrant
and who travelled to another land searching for a home and safety.

Amen.