Messages: Old and New
June Plans
Names of Months
Florence Nightingale
Flower Festivals
Mayflowers
Lindbergh’s Flight to Paris
Trips
Fences and Walls
Alligators and Crocodiles

Messages: Old and New
06/05/01

        On January 1, 1979, I began transmitting daily messages from the telephone in our church in the Japanese city of Takahama.  Called “Kyou no messe-ji” (“Today’s Message”), these Bible-based messages continued until May 31, 1998.  In December 1994, a book entitled “Kokoro no Sanpomichi” (“Pathway for the Heart”), which included a message chosen by church members for every day of the year, was published by Kirisuto Shinbunsha.  On September 1, 1980, I began transmitting a daily message in English called “Daily Word” from our home in Nagoya.  Eventually taken over by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), which put it on the Internet, that service continued until February 28, 1999.  Following my return to the United States, in response to the entreaty of former “Daily Word” listeners, I began a similar service called “Timely Words” in September of that year to which new messages were added three times a week. For over a year, a special committee has been actively involved in making a permanent repository for these messages, which now has been made available to all who are interested.  The address is: <www.biwa.ne.jp/%7Esyobo/index3.html>.  There, my “Daily Word” messages from 93/03/01 (#4100) to 99/02/28 (#6290) can be viewed according to date, number or title.  Past and present “Timely Words” messages are also available on that site.  Comments as well as corrections may be made by writiing in the Guestbook or by mail to the staff or to me.  Also, I request those readers who desire to hear “voiced messages” to please notify the staff or me.  (960)

June Plans
06/05/04

        According to one theory, the names of the months of May and June are derived from Latin words for “elders” and “youths,” but months cannot be limited to certain age groups.  In Japan, this first week in May is considered a “golden week” because of the numerous special days it includes: Greenery Day on April 29, May Day on May 1, Constitution Memorial Day on May 3 and Children’s Day on May 5.  When a school year begins and ends depends upon the country and the particular school involved.  In the United States of America, school years have traditionally begun in September and ended in June, and although some schools have altered their schedules, June continues to be the month when most graduation ceremonies are held.  The Nagoya International School in Japan, which is accredited by an American Association of Schools and Colleges, follows the American schedule and will hold its graduation ceremony on the afternoon of Sunday, June 4th this year.  Since a granddaughter of ours is in the graduating class, my wife and I are planning to attend that ceremony.  Last year, we attended the graduation ceremony as guests of the school, which was celebrating its 40th anniversary, but this year we will attend as grandparents.  While we are in the area, we plan to visit churches and other organizations that we have been related to.  We look forward to meeting former listeners to the “Daily Word” telephone messages on Saturday afternoon, June 10th at the Josei Kaikan in Nagoya.   (961)       

Names of Months
06/05/07

        In the calendars now used in most countries in the world, a year is divided into twelve months, each of which has a separate name.  It is easy to remember the names of the months in modern Japanese because they are composed simply of a number plus the Japanese word for “month.”  Thus, the Japanese name for May is “go-gatsu,” or “5th month,” and for June is “roku-gatsu,” or “6th month.”  In traditional Japanese, however, each month had a name related to natural or cultural characteristics of that time of year.  The traditional name for the 5th month (satsuki) may be derived from words meaning “planting month” and the name for the 6th month (minazuki) may be rooted in words meaning “planting ended month.”  The English names of months also have interesting theories regarding their derivations.  One theory related to the names of May and June was noted in the previous message, but another theory is that the names of both of these months were derived from the names of a couple of mythological goddesses. Maia was the wife of Zeus the mother of Hermes, or Mercury, and Juno was the wife of Jupiter and the guardian of all women.  Whichever theory is correct, at the present time, both May and June are considered feminine names.  Checking over the list of residents in this retirement community, I find that of the 337 women residing here, there are three named June and one named Mae.  Japanese names are much more meaningful than English names, but all of us demonstrate the significance of our names in the way we live.  (962)

Florence Nightingale
06/05/12

        The meaning of Japanese names is usually very clear and often the reason for giving a child that name may be explained.  In Western languages, however, the meaning of names and the reason for them is often very unclear, but Florence Nightingale is an exception.  “Nightingale,” meaning “night singing,” is the name of a beautiful bird that sings at night and “Florence,” derived from “flower,” is the name of the Italian city where Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820.  Resisting the pressure of her upper-class British parents, she felt called  by God to attend to the needs of suffering people.  At that time, hospitals were shabby, patients were neglected and nursing was considered a disreputable calling.  With deep resolve, Florence aimed to improve the conditions of hospitals and to make nursing an honorable occupation for women.  Appointed by the British Secretary of War to oversee the treatment of wounded soldiers in the Crimean Peninsula during the Crimean War, she led a team of nurses to establish a new type of hospital there that changed the general concept of hospitals and nursing from that time on.  Florence Nightingale’s name has become a stimulating ideal of the nursing profession.  In 1910, she became the first woman to receive the British Order of Merit and many hospitals in the United States of America are celebrating National Hospital Week this week “to focus attention on the work that hospitals are performing.”  Florence Nightingale has provided us all with a good example of what a dedicated woman with a strong resolve can accomplish.  (963)      

Flower Festivals
06/05/15

        In 1912, the city of Tokyo made a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the city of Washington, D.C.  Since 1927, a National Cherry Blossom Festival, emphasizing the friendship between the U. S. A. and Japan, has been held for six days when the cherry blossoms are in bloom.  Also in 1927, a high school biology teacher in Holland, Michigan suggested that tulips be planted to beautify the city, which had been settled by a group of Dutch settlers in 1847.  (“Holland” is often used for the entire country of the Netherlands, but actually it is the name of only a part of it.)  The year after the suggestion was made, 100,000 tulip bulbs were planted with the enthusiastic support of city residents.  More tulips were planted the following year and since then a Tulip Time Festival has been held annually which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.  The festival lasts for four days beginning on the Wednesday nearest May 15.  On that Wednesday, the mayor and town council examine the streets, find them dirty and order them scrubbed.  Then hundreds of residents in Dutch costumes appear with brushes, brooms and water.  Following the scrubbing, a parade begins, which includes bands and floats.  A highlight of the festival is the performance by hundreds of girl dancers who have practiced Dutch folk dances under the direction of their high school gym teachers, and on Saturday morning, a Tulip Time Baton Twirling Contest is held to select a national champion from among contestants who have come from many other states.  Let us be thankful for pretty flowers and consider how and why they developed. (964)       

Mayflowers
06/05/18

        There are a number of flowers that bloom in this month of May that may be called “mayflowers,” but the particular flowers so denoted are different in England and the United States of America.   As a proper noun, however, “Mayflower” has a special significance in those two countries, for that was the name of the boat that brought the Pilgrims from England to New England in 1620.  This group of 102 Englishmen and English women were opposed to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king and wished to establish a separate church.  The Mayflower left Plymouth, England on September 16 and arrived on the coast of Massachusetts on December 26, in the midst of an extremely cold winter, during which half of the passengers died.  Before their arrival, while still on the ship, the “Mayflower Compact,” which provided for a temporary government to frame just and equal laws for the general good of the new Plymouth Colony by the will of the majority, was agreed upon.  This compact established an important example and precedent for subsequent American governments.  But religious and political independence was not the only concept brought to the “New World” from England.  According to an American author, James Grover Thurber, “Humor is the other side of tragedy.  Humor is a serious thing.  I like to think of it as one of our greatest and earliest natural resources which must be preserved at all costs.  It came over on the Mayflower and we should have it, all of it.”  A sense of humor helps us view people and things in a healthy perspective.  (965)        

Lindbergh’s Flight to Paris
06/05/21

        The names of a number of well-known cities end with a term that originally denoted a fortified or walled city, but some of them are spelled differently.  St. Petersburg is a city in Russia, Salzburg is in Austria and Johannesburg is in South Africa.  Pittsburgh is in the American state of Pennsylvania, of which Harrisburg is the capital and Wittenberg is in Germany.  Lindbergh, however, is not the name of a city.  It is the family name of a famous aviator, the first person to fly alone over the Atlantic Ocean.  Charles Lindbergh, born in Detroit, Michigan in 1902, became interested in flying while in university and became an airmail pilot in 1926.  When a French-American philanthropist offered a prize for a nonstop flight to Paris, Lindbergh supervised the construction of a custom-designed monoplane, which he flew from San Diego to New York via St. Louis in a record-breaking 21 hours and 20 minutes.  On May 20, 1927, 79 years ago this week, Charles Lindbergh flew the 5,808 kilometers from New York to Paris nonstop in 331/2 hours and won a $25,000 prize offered for the first successful  flight of that kind.  This handsome and quiet American caught the imagination of millions of people around the world, but in a French city, he escaped being mobbed by wildly cheering crowds when they mistakenly carried off someone else.  Later, Charles Lindbergh wrote these meaningful words: “Now at the first half-century of engine-driven flight, we are confronted with the stark fact that the historical significance of aircraft has been primarily military and destructive.”   (966)

Trips
06/05/22

Depending on both its meaning and context, the word “trip” may have either a very enjoyable or very painful implication. A number of residents in this retirement community have had to go to a hospital for surgery after tripping and breaking some bones. Others have many joyful stories to tell of the trips they have taken to many different parts of the world. My wife and I are scheduled to begin a trip to Japan next week, the fourth such trip since we “ retired” in 1999. Previous trips were related to church or school activities, but the primary purpose of this trip is to attend the graduation ceremony of our granddaughter at the Nagoya International School on Sunday afternoon, June 4th. We attended the graduation ceremony of her elder sister here in Florida two years ago. We are planning to bring back our 8-year-old grandson to spend a couple of weeks with us until his parents and sister arrive. On Saturday afternoon, June 10th, there will be a meeting of former listeners to my “Daily Word” telephone service at the Nagoya Josei Kaikan. On the following two Sunday mornings, I am scheduled to preach at the Kirisuto Kodo Kyokai churches I served in the cities of Takahama and Kariya. My wife and I are looking forward to meeting old friends we have not seen for a long time. Readers of this message are invited to attend any of these meetings. While we are on this trip, we will try not to trip, but I will recall the words of a Greek philosopher over 2000 years ago: “Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.” (967)

Fences and Walls
06/05/24

        Having lived most of my life in Japan, I am very conscious of differences between the traditions, customs and viewpoints of people of different cultures.  Whether to emphasize the differences or to seek to amalgamate them into a unified whole depends on the aims and natural inclinations of those involved.  Some years ago, a poem by Robert Frost, an American poet, deeply impressed me and I have often quoted it on various occasions. Entitled “Mending a Wall,” it includes these words as its theme: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”  The poem, however, includes another perspective, affirming that “Good fences make good neighbours.”  I thought of this poem as I entered East Berlin with my family when a great wall separated East and West Germany.  As Israel has moved to grant more authority to the Arabs, it has also erected fences or walls to make it more difficult to slip across the border between the two countries.  And one of the major problems facing the government of the United States of America at the present time is how to better control the illegal entrance of immigrants who cross the border from Mexico. There are plans to erect a fence or wall along the border between the two countries and how the candidates for Congress in the national election to be held this fall respond to such plans will affect the result.  Although fences and walls are needed in certain situations and some politicians and religionists emphasize irreconcilable differences, personally, I believe it is better to recognize the basic unity of all human beings.  (968)

Alligators and Crocodiles
06/05/28

        While preparing to move from Japan to Florida, some people informed us that from that time on we would be experiencing hurricanes instead of typhoons.  Now, we are preparing for the hurricane season, which begins on June 1st.  But there is another peculiar danger for certain Florida residents and visitors beside the weather.  People who swim in the ocean off the coast of Florida must be careful that there are no sharks in the area.  These large fish sometimes attack swimmers and wound them with their sharp teeth.  Recent newspaper articles indicate that it is not only these large fish that can be dangerous.  In certain areas, large reptiles must also be avoided.  The only times I have seen alligators or crocodiles have been in a zoo or in the Alligator Farm in the nearby city of St. Augustine.  Crocodiles are usually longer than alligators, between 4 and 6 meters long.  Alligators have broader, blunter snouts, which give their heads a triangular appearance.  Also, the lower fourth tooth of the crocodile protrudes when the mouth is closed, but this is not so for alligators.  So far this year, three women have been killed by alligators and certain beaches have been closed for a period.  According to the wildlife commission, from 2001 until 2005, there have been 57 gator attacks in the state, seven of which were fatal.  Although there is a swimming pool in our community, at the present time my wife and I do not go swimming—either there or in the ocean, but that may change when we bring back with us our 8-year-old grandson from Japan.   (969)