Hearts of the world...

Six months ago, just after the earthquakes and tsunamis in New Zealand and Japan, someone organized a prayer vigil in this garden on the grounds of a hospital near where I live. People hung prayers for peace on the bushes, a hope for recovery for all those whose lives had been devastated by those calamities.

Now, six months on, about fifty little paper flags are still blowing in the wind, their paper buckling, ink running or smudged by rain and dew; and while New Zealand seems to be recovering, finally, Japan is still in critical danger. The radiation escaping from Fukushima is more than twenty times that released by the bombing of Hiroshima, we are told. And it could get worse.

I don't know if prayer vigils and paper prayer flags are of any use to anybody, but they can't do any harm. Each time I pass this garden, which is almost daily, I add my breath of hope for the recovery of the whole planet.