Tsunami Wings
Posted on | October 17, 2011 | 1 Comment
The earthquake and tsunami that devastated Sendai, Japan, last March continues to reverberate in our minds and hearts, just as the painful task of recovery continues for the Japanese people. On World Communion Day this October, we remembered this suffering and struggle for restoration in solidarity with the people of Japan. My wife Sylvia created an installation
composed of fabrics recalling the waves, pieces of reuse, and dormant stalks symbolizing a life still to rise from the destruction. She constructed a mobile of 150 origami cranes that we suspended over the altar, each crane representing 100 of the known dead, which surely will reach some twenty thousand people. The cranes, a symbol of peace and hope, move slowly and quietly with the air above the altar.
In response to this moving memorial I composed a poem, which I share here. In addition, Sylvia led our Roundtable Worship in creating our own origami cranes as a work of prayer, meditation, and reflection about the arduous movement from tragedy to transformation.
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Sky disappeared
when water stole our lives
and slunk back to the darkness of the sea,
leaving dolls, refrigerators, calendars, and cars,
whole houses in a pyre
waiting for the burning.
The rabid wave,
an aquaeous lava
lunging from the tortured crust of earth,
foamed over fleeing forms,
her appetite an echo of our greed.
Thrown out of time
we hovered in the air
serene beyond the paper shell
that folded into origami wings
gathered up our souls
to fly from the abyss like cranes
white with fright and innocence.
The arms that waving sank
now orchestrate the air invisible
above the altar
of our hopes and tears.
Tags: Tsunami
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838.
October 23rd, 2011 @ 2:11 pm
Bill and Sylvia
Beautiful artwork and poetry. The two of you create some really nice things when you combine your projects. Thanks for sharing them with those of us who are not as talented.