One Thousand Cranes for Peace

Peace Cranes in filght in our sanctuary

The idea of "One Thousand Cranes for Peace" is from a true story of Sadako Sasake, who was two years old during the bombing of Hiroshima. Then years later, she contracted leukemia which had commonly become known by the Japanese as the "Atom Bomb Disease", a disease for which there was no known cure.  While hospitalized Sadako's closest friend reminded her of an ancient Japanese legend. If she folded a thousand origami paper cranes, the Gods might grant her wish to live.  Her struggle for life and her dedication to Peace inspired her classmates to begin a project constructing a Peace statue in Hiroshima with the inscription, "This is our cry.  This is our prayer. To create Peace in the world."  The statue was draped, not with one thousand cranes, but with millions ... from around the world.  Sadako did not live to see the completed statue but the spirit of peace, which she and her friend began, has inspired people around the world to use origami cranes as symbols for hope and peace.

At Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church, a number of people have been talking about what we might do to express our prayerful hopes for peace in Iraq and to offer something tangible that would help in the overwhelming job of returning life to something approaching normal after the devastating experience of war.  The Peacemaking Committee has decided to use the Peace Crane theme to demonstrate, not only our prayers and hopes for peace, but also to provide a gift to our Presbyterian sisters and brothers in Basra, the church pastored by The Rev. Gilbert Shaheen Al-Bazi, who was scheduled to come to our church to speak last fall before the threat of war became so intense that he was not permitted to leave Iraq.  The need for food, medical supplies and fuel is desperate ... Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church would like to offer some measure of help.

Hirume Behnke spent an evening a few weeks ago teaching the Peacemaking Committee to fold and make origami paper cranes.  Following that evening some of the members took their newly found skill to other places where they met and taught others to make them.  And we want to enlist your participation in this project as well. 

We hope that you will plan to learn this new skill, if you don't already know how to make an origami crane or to teach someone else if you already know how.  And we hope that you will become as enthused as your Peacemaking Committee about the accompanying gift that we will send to Basra (We will be able to send it via Manu Ashoo, our Iraqi-American friend from Pleasant Hill.)

Shalom, 
Your Peacemaking Committee