Tibetan Prayer Flags

I sit in my church office with my Tibetan prayer flags hanging from one side of the room to the other. No one asks me what those are – and this is probably a good thing because I am working at a church in rural Minnesota, in a place where an Episcopalian, a Quaker, or a Mennonite would be asked if they were even Christian. It is a very ethnocentric culture – I am considered German because of my last name, despite my pleas that that is the only thing left of my Germanic history. It is a strange place – filled with stoic and silent people, though they are very loving and giving in their own quiet ways.

So, I sit and stare at my Tibetan prayer flags and wonder about other worlds. I feel guilty that I have hung them in my office where there is very little movement of air. They should be waving in the wind – with blessings dancing on the breeze. They should be fading and shredding as a reminder of the impermanence of this life and once worn out they should be burned so that the last bit of blessing could rise up as incense. Instead, they only move when the forced air heat cycles on or when, in desperation, I exhale the biggest breath so that I can watch them move a few centimeters. They should be hanging some place other than in the stale air of my office, but I just can’t bring myself to put them outside. I need the color and the hope and the promise that there are many people in this world, many faiths, many beliefs…and that our prayers dance and hang in the air…whether they are printed on prayer flags, prayed on our knees, or sent up with incense. They simply remind me that I am not alone in faith – even when our faiths seem so radically different.