Our Church Flags: 8. Zimbabwe

 

What is utterly fascinating about the flag of Zimbabwe is not its colours or general design.  It is the bird over to the left.

When I first saw this flag a few years ago I assumed that the bird depicted flies in large flocks across the land.  But not so.

In truth this is likely to be based on a bird once in the area, but the actual symbol is derived from a sculptured soapstone bird found in the ancient Great Zimbabwe site.  A statue not a creature.

More interesting still is that this bird has achieved something that little else could ever hope to do - it has figured both in modern Zimbabwe's symbols and in the symbols of the independent apartheid Rhodesia that declared UDI from the British.

The sculptors who long ago formed the soapstone birds could hardly have believed that they would provide the only point of unity between two regimes of sworn enemies.  We never do know what our legacy will truly be.

Our Church Flags: 7. Hong Kong

On a sadly memorable day in which Russia launched bloodshed upon Europe, it seems appropriate to have a cheerful flag.  The flag of Hong Kong.

That is not to suggest that everything in Hong Kong is going well.  Those who come to our church from that background would not say so.  But the flag at least is a cheerful thing.

In this blog series we have seen often enough that red on a flag usually means bloodshed.  It is hard not to imagine some (perhaps many) years hence a Ukrainian flag with red on it somewhere.

Happily the Hong Kong flag's red is the festive celebratory red more familiarly found in Chinese New Year decorations.

Then there is the flower.  Astonishingly for such a tiny land area, this is representative of a flower that was actually first discovered in Hong Kong.  Nobody looking at the teeming city would imagine it as the place of such a discovery.

Oh for a world that discovers flowers instead of shedding blood.