Happy Birthday, Marie Therese

Happy Birthday.  This the traditional greeting.  Marie Therese, the future Queen of France (admittedly for less than an hour) was born on this day in 1778 to her mother Marie Antoinette and father Louis XVI.  And on the face of it, she was born into great happiness at the Palace of Versailles. 

It was not, however, a happy birth day.  In point of fact, it was a matter of miraculous wonder that she lived to day two.   For hours she struggled to live after a most traumatic birth - a birth so dreadful that from then on the king refused to allow people to be present when his children were born.

And as French politics turned out, it was also a matter of wonder that she lived a life that ended in a natural death, something that most of her family were denied. She was sentenced to death in the French Revolution, but this was moderated to permanent exile.

In this season when we  remember a King born and placed in a manger it is worth remembering that birth into a palace is no guarantee of a happy life - as others have found.

Our Church Flags: 4. Brazil

Some flags are easy to draw.  This is emphatically not true of the Brazilian flag - I pity the elementary school child trying to reproduce it:

The representation of the night sky has stars for each state - not so unusual - but the number of states (27) and their representation as actual southern hemisphere constellations produce a flag that makes the United States or Australian/New Zealand starry flags a doddle to draw by comparison.

On the flag the night sky replaces the Imperial insignia that was on the flag when the Empire of Brazil was a colony of Portugal.  It represents the declaration of a new start one night!

So at Christmas it reminds us of the Christmas night sky from which the angels brought the message of a new Ruler who would bless humankind with true peace.