Before you reach the marketplace called Kilaeua, there is an Episcopal Church which blends the Hawaiian and mainland cultures in its service and in the rich flora around its building. Kathy (first spouse) and our friends Gail and Karen attended there in 2015 and felt the blessing of cultural acceptance in the people and the building. I am still wearing a flowered short-sleeved shirt I bought in their Thrift Shop.
Victoria and I stopped and prayed in the same open sanctuary on Thursday and walked the labyrinth in the back that led to the Peace Pole at its center.
I was most struck by the stained glass window near the front of the sanctuary portraying Christ in the open- handed beckoning gesture to the world, as if in timely supplication to the war-torn continent. Every Christ portrayal seems to have its own cultural bias, and this one seemed a little East European to me with it fair skin and high forehead.
In contrast, we saw another peacemaker portrayed below with his fellow tribesman: King Kamehameha. This king conquered the warring tribes with steel weapons he purchased from the Europeans. According to the dedication accompanying the council painting below, King K dedicated his life to bringing peace to the islands by conquest.
Could this also be what Vladimir Putin had in mind in uniting the peoples of Eastern Europe, one country at a time? Or does he have more of “Lebensraum” mentality like his predecessor, Adolf Hitler, who was not satisfied with assimilating the German-speaking lands, but advanced eastward and southward into Europe to bring all Aryan peoples together?
Peace in our time is more likely to come from the beckoning Christ than the uncompromising warrior, but, again, Christ said his kingdom was not of this world. Perhaps it is something we find at the end of a labyrinth.
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