For Japan

A community I visited north of Tokyo, the Asian Rural Institute, sent a message to its friends about shattered glass, structural damage, no electricity, and lots of aftershocks, but no fatalities. My friends and family in Japan are safe, as far as I know. But no one is OK. It will take more than one lifetime for people to recover.

Unless you’ve been to Japan, it’s hard to imagine the destructive force of the tsumami that raced as far as 6 miles inland. You have to imagine half the population of the U.S.–150 million people–living in an area about 20% of the size of California, most of that area on the coastal plains that hug the seacoast. Now, massive, sprawling garbage heaps have replaced the towns and villages that once were squeezed along the northeast coast. Profoundly worse, however, for the only country to survive two nuclear bomb attacks, is the threat of a nuclear explosion at Fukushima’s reactor.

I haven’t got words for how I feel. My friend Tyler Boudreau, a Marine veteran of Iraq and author of Packing Inferno, thought of me and sent me this song, “Requiem,” by Austin musician, Eliza Gilkyson. It’s from her album, “Paradise Hotel.” The Mother Mary reference may seem culturally out of place, but the primary deity of Shinto is the goddess Amaterasu. And during the 250 years of hidden Christianity during the Shogunate, Christians used statues of Kannon, the female Buddhist saint of mercy as a stand in for Mary (Kannon as the Madonna). Here are the lyrics. Amen.

Requiem by Eliza Gilkyson

mother mary, full of grace, awaken
all our homes are gone, our loved ones taken
taken by the sea
mother mary, calm our fears, have mercy
drowning in a sea of tears, have mercy
hear our mournful plea
our world has been shaken,
we wander our homelands forsaken
in the dark night of the soul
bring some comfort to us all,
o mother mary come and carry us in your embrace
that our sorrows may be faced
mary, fill the glass to overflowing
illuminate the path where we are going
have mercy on us all
in fun’ral fires burning
each flame to your myst’ry returning
in the dark night of the soul
your shattered dreamers, make them whole,
o mother mary find us where we’ve fallen out of grace,
lead us to a higher place
in the dark night of the soul
our broken hearts you can make whole,
o mother mary come and carry us in your embrace,
let us see your gentle face, mary

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