Wednesday, 14 May 2008

• pray for Kinmen

   

  This week is our town's HUGE annual festival for the city god, so everyone is preparing costumes, carts, buggies, etc. for the parade on Friday. It makes my heart sick to see it...it is a dark time...because a lot of drinking, and also praying to the gods and spirit-indwelling stuff goes on in preparation for it. On the outside, and to most of the locals, it seems like just another chance to celebrate their culture and keep old traditions alive. Much of it is so beautiful and bright and festive! The little children are SO adorable! The colors and costumes, and lion dances are so intriguing and exciting! But always behind them come those older men, backs bare and lacerated by self-inflicted beatings, skewers stuck through their cheeks, eyes glassy and vacant, staring as they stumble straight ahead, oblivious to their cheerful surroundings. They are the ones who really understand the meaning of it all, and are taking the brunt of the burden by giving themselves over to these spirits. They serve as a startling reminder to me each year of the lies and heathenism behind all the colorful celebrations, and of why I am here...to bring the Truth and Light to this dark place.

  Pray for Kinmen and it's people this week...and always...that their eyes may one day be opened to the futility and needlessness of it all...that the Light may dawn on this dark island..that the Truth will set them free...

  "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly..." John 10:10

  

   

   

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