Welcome to Virtual Hatsumode!
Send in your prayer tablets and we will offer them up at the Portland Church altar to pray with you throughout the month of January, and the rest of the year.
Write & send in your Prayer
Wooden tablets called Ema are used in shrines in Japan to hang prayers. Here, Portland style, we’re using a more slender and tree friendlier version called construction paper! Click above on the link to send us an electronic message we will write in for you, or for a JPG of the tablet you can print, cut, and mail in yourself.
*Do not use above for confidential prayers. Please use link below. Thank you!
Click to hear and see coins tossed into the offering box!
(Click “repeat” to continue tossing coins.)
Make An offering
Click above for activity purposes and fun! (video only, no hidden fees or obligations)
If you would actually like to make an offering of gratitude to Kami, please click the below button to go to our donation page.
Click here to ring (shake) the bells.
(Click “repeat” to continue ringing bells.)
Ring the Bells!
Shaking of the bells in Shinto is believed to wake or get the attention of the deity enshrined within the altar.
In Konko, we believe that Kami is nature and the universe itself, therefore cannot be enshrined. We clap four times before and after prayers as a practice for our hearts to be focused in the time between.
Konko believes not in amulets, but instead that people save themselves with their own hearts as stated in the Tenchi Kakitsuke above.
The Divine Reminder