Dear Friends, 

In my pastoral letter for the beginning of the New Year, I talked about how we need to recalculate in 2025. This does not mean that we need to reinvent the wheel! We can simply choose to build on what others have started.

 As I say, we don’t have to create an original piece of art or come up with some new idea or invention to make a difference in the world. Take Sadako and her friends. Sadako was a little Japanese girl who was caught in the bombing of Hiroshima. While her young life was spared, many of her family and friends were badly injured or killed in that horrific event. Later, when she was ten years old, she developed leukemia as a result of her exposure to the radiation. She knew she did not have long to live; but instead of bemoaning her fate, as many of us would do, she decided to put all her energies into rallying others to work for peace. 

Japanese legend has it that anyone who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish. Sadako’s wish was that no one would ever again have to experience what she had, and that people would find ways to live in peace with one another. To this end she endeavoured to make a thousand white paper cranes and send them to as many people as she could, inviting them to become disciples for peace. Sadly, she died before she could complete her task.

 Those who knew of her great courage could have become embittered and angry, but instead they decided to pick up on what she had started by building on Sadako’s peace mission. Today large groups of young people visit the Children’s Peace Monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, paying their respects to the memory of Sadako and other child victims. As the children gather around the monument of Sadako, they fly their white paper cranes in the hope that one day our world will know peace. Their efforts are an attempt to build on what Sadako had started.

We too can build on what others have begun. So, let’s think about a loved one or friend who began a practice of kindness that we can pick up on. Let’s join MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) or Amnesty International. There are many other organisations that could use our help: the Food Bank, Huron Hospice, the Women’s Shelter in Goderich, Habitat for Humanity, and he Canadian Foodgrains Bank, to names just a few examples. 

We still have eleven months left to this New Year. Let’s build on what’s already there and make it even better!

Blessings,

Sheila