So, anyway…moving on from yesterday’s blog post…

Monkfish Abbey took up the task of making prayer flags this year as a form of intercession. We experimented with prayer flags because most of our tribe are recovering evangelicals and/or artists and your basic “Dear God, please help such-and-thus” kind of prayer isn’t really functioning for them anymore. But we do want a transformative faith, we want to be about something much larger than ourselves. So we needed to find a way to connect with the wider world around us, and to join our siblings in sorrow and hope, loss and recovery, and to talk to God about all that stuff. Prayer flags, in Seattle, are a fairly common site — you might say they are part of this city’s visual language. So prayer flags it was, and prayer flags it continues to be.

I’ve been wanting to make space in our Thursday gatherings to make more prayer flags for numerous events that have happened these past months: the earthquake in Pakistan; reaching the 2,000 body count mark in Iraq; homes lost to fire in Texas and Oklahoma; miners lost to stone in West Virginia; lives lost to mud in Indonesia. But what with Thanksgiving and Advent and Christmas and all, we just haven’t had time. (Which makes me wonder about how we are doing things…I adore the rhythm of practicing significant events in the live of Christ, in the course of our seasonal year, and in our own history….but when in surplants serving the least, last, and lost it makes me wonder, quite honestly, how I can do this better? I confess we still don’t have the mix quite right.)

Still, I’ve been working on a flag for Pakistan — so far it only has an iron-on image of Horton Hears a Who –and Souren spent an evening digitally cutting and pasting various pictures together to create an image of peace in the Iraqi desert. Hopefully we will get these done, and hung, and maybe others will join ours.

I’m learning that when big plans fall through (Oh! I know! Let’s have a neighborhood wide intercession night for Pakistan where we make flags and raise money!), simple plans suffice. Sometimes the simple things even surpass the orginal idea. So here’s my thought now. Why don’t we all, right now (okay, when you are done with this paragraph) go to Americans for UNFPA. Why? So you can donate $10 on line. What will $10 do? It will provide eight emergency birth kits with essentials like a razor to cut an umbilical cord and a plastic sheet for the mother to lie on. Why is this important? Because the October earthquake in India and Pakistan not only killed 73,000 people, but also left 40,000 pregnant woment without doctors or midwives. …and it’s winter….and people are living outside….and babies are coming.

Okay, ready? Go.

Now doesn’t that seem so much more Jesus-y than grumping at each other. Ah! I thought so!

p.s. I got this info from Glamour of all things! Go ahead. Mock me if you must. It’s true, I bought a Glamour.I was just couldn’t resist reading the top Do’s and Dont’s for 2005. Something about those little black bars make me feel ever so much more with-it. But hey, not only did I find this great place to donate, but I also got to read an article about the Queen Bee of all bloggers, Heather Armstrong over at Dooce.