Peaceful morning on our way to Stand for Peace

January's fall colors as we head out to stand for peace
© L Kathryn Grace

It's a calm, peaceful morning as we two grandmothers head out to stand for peace.The neighborhood is quiet, with just a few folks grabbing coffee from the local shops, a few slow-moving cars. No honking!

As I prepare for our seventh stand, I ask for peace in my heart, peace in my soul, and a stillness of being that I might hear and understand next steps, not only for today, but for 2012.

More to come.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, © L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Standing for peace after Zap! Bam! Pow!

San Francisco City Hall
Our sixth stand for peace
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Okay, it wasn't exactly Zap! Bam! Pow! We had words. Saturday, the last day of 2011, in our mini version of The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering, Sharon and I  stood for peace in front of City Hall for the sixth week in a row. We'd had a rough morning.

The phone rang early--one of those calls that pushes buttons. "I can't talk about this now," she said. "I need to feel peaceful before our stand."

One of the things that makes our relationship work, always has, is our willingness to talk through whatever comes up.

My 7-year-old rears her rebellious head

It never fails to amaze me how quickly I can revert to a hurt seven year old mentality and want to lash out in anger and frustration. Sometimes I do.

Saturday morning, getting that phone call as we prepared for our stand, I felt the flush and rush of blood to my head. Not wanting to start something big, I chose my words carefully. Not carefully enough.

I wanted to take care of the issue right now. She wanted to wait. I get a strong physiological response when I feel I have to squelch feelings. I know very well what the term "my blood boiled" means. Sometimes I stomp around, muttering obscenities. Sometimes I remember in time, before I've said things I'll regret, to put certain coping mechanisms to use. It's a kind of litany.

Breathe.
Breathe again.
What am I feeling?
Mad? Okay. Yeah, I'm mad. Arrrrrggggghhhh.
What do I want to feel?
Calm. Peace.
Breathe.
What can I do about this?
Breathe.
Breathe.
Let answers come.
Urnnnggghhhh! Don't want to be adult and peaceful. Rrrggggg.
Breathe.
Still mad.
Okay.
Breathe.
How is she feeling? Mm-hmmm. Okay. But what about ... ?

Breathe.
I love her.
Breathe.
How can I support her in this while acknowledging my own feelings? (Yeah, I tend to get cerebral.)

Breathe.

And so it goes. We've known each other for nearly a quarter century.. We know each other's patterns. We trust, each, the other to return and talk through whatever our issue, when the time is right. Saturday morning, we didn't have enough time. We left the house, shoulders a bit high, tension in our steps. Breathing.

Then there's 'righteous' anger

Street Person on a far warmer morning than last Saturday
Image Credit: Puravida
A morgueFile Free Photo

A few minutes later, we walked from the train, past far too many homeless people curled in their sleeping bags and blankets against the bitter cold, some up already, stamping their feet, hugging their sides.

I never walk past these folks without being aware how precarious our own financial situation, how easily we might find ourselves among them, should our economy take another protracted nose dive in 2012.

That morning, having breathed and calmed myself, having reached a state of equilibrium on the train, I felt anger seething under my skin again as I walked past an overturned wheelchair, it's occupant cocooned in a sleeping bag on the hard pavement, a small backpack at his feet.

How easily my anger bubbles, not only at home when triggered at just the wrong moment, but at injustice, the pervasive injustice that is homelessness, that is lack of medical care, that is hunger in the richest country in the world.

Walking past an upright, blanket-shrouded man, his face and hands black with street dirt, his eyes red and a little crazed, I recognized the faces I put on my anger. The Koch Brothers. Dick Cheney. The Bush family. Icons of the uber wealthy and the people who serve their purposes in Washington, D.C., our state capitols, San Francisco City Hall.

As we approached that gilded dome, once glowing, now fading to bird-streaked charcoal in this economy that fills the coffers of the rich while feeding and housing ever fewer, this faded poorly kept  monument to capitalism and tenacity, whose dome is the fifth largest in the world, taller than the US Capitol, I felt the anger I carry in my body, anger I face each day.

Being peace when I might choose rage

Every single day I struggle for balance between being the peace I want to see in the world and fuming  at one atrocity after another, at my failure to meet the need to find some way to mitigate and change the suffering caused by human greed and carelessness. Each day, throughout the day, I stop and breathe.

Breathe.
I have been here before, many times. I acknowledge these feelings. I fold my hands and bow to them. Namaste.
Breathe.

I ask for guidance, if only for the next step.
Breathe.

It works. On Saturday it worked. Peace entered my heart, a warmth starting at the core of my heart, and spreading outward.

Image Credit: Sharon L Richardson
From Re-Imagining Peace
All rights reserved - Used with permission

Breathing, I acknowledged again the anger, the suffering.
Breathing, I accepted what is.
Breathing, I knew there was--is--a better way.
Breathing, I asked for guidance.

Making peace

All the while, as we walked, we talked quietly of our altercation earlier and how our stand informs our responses and is informed by our feelings and actions. Breathing, I gave gratitude for this mini-eruption, this opportunity to practice our intention to bring peace into the world.

We do not stand for peace merely to make a visible, public stand. We stand for peace to change our own hearts.

Standing for peace is not only a ritual, it is a way of becoming peace.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Standing for peace, we are all one

Before heading off this morning with another grandmother to stand for peace in front of city hall, I ran across this video, We Are All One. It says everything we need to know about why standing for peace is so important, and it says it in a way that heals my soul, encourages my heart. May it do so for you.



Wherever you may be this morning, whatever you may do, take a few minutes to stand in silence for peace, with peace. Perhaps it will change your life as it is changing mine.

Breaking silence

Update 10:55 a.m.

We broke silence during our stand today, distracted in part by activity around us, then full of thoughts we were eager to share. I enjoyed the discussion, as I always do with Sharon.

I am also aware how much I missed the silence, how precious, now, the few minutes of quiet meditation on either side of our conversation. Not that it was off topic or disrespectful of our purpose, for it was neither, but that an hour of silence in that space, filled with intent to bring peace to our city and our world, grounds me. That grounding informs my entire week, is behind every decision I make, and gently settles me when I tend to flare.

So I'm thinking about silence, how I relish it, living in the city as I do, where the streets around me are seldom without noise. I'm thinking about the few times I have been in a gathering of several hundred people, all silent, not even a speaker to guide us; and the near silence of the woods, far from any town.

What do you know of silence? Have you found it useful at times? Have you experienced silence in a profound way? I would deeply appreciate your thoughts.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

How standing for peace changes me

Stand for Peace bumper sticker
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

Today, I'm spending some time developing the new web site, so I offer this article I wrote awhile back on Wizzley: How Standing for Peace Five Minutes a Day Changes Me. I'd be pleased if you would check it out, leave a comment, tell me what you think. Here's an excerpt.

I tend to be a fairly calm person. That is, I tend to be a fairly calm person until something riles me. I can flash like a whole mob. ... On the days I stand for peace, the moment I begin to respond in anger, or feel resentment seeping into my heart over some slight, almost always I stop a moment. There is another way to approach the situation, any situation. Standing for peace five minutes a day ...                                                                Read more

If you don't have time to flip over there and read the article, would you be so kind as to share something in the comments here about your own journey to peace, either in your life today or anywhere in the world?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

What would happen if The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering came true?

Grove of pollarded trees behind us as we
stood for peace Saturday
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

On Saturday, Sharon and I stood for peace outside City Hall, our third week. Under the blue, blue San Francisco sky, we two stood in silence, each in our thoughts, glancing to smile at one another now and then. One thought flared again and again: What would happen if our numbers grew? If we became four? If four became eight, and eight sixteen? What would happen if Sharon Medhi's story, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World, came true?

What if next week, as we turned, stretching our backs to keep them from getting too stiff, we saw another woman standing, facing City Hall? Then, stretching our backs the other way, we saw a fourth woman, there, deep in the grove?

What if, the week after that, there were others, each standing alone, perhaps a few in pairs or threes, scattered about the Joseph B. Alioto Performing Arts Piazza? Some might stand near the north playground, its bright colors glistening purple and green in the sun. Some might stand on the grass, near the homeless people crawling from their sleeping bags and makeshift shelters into the sunlight.

What would they think about, all those women, and perhaps some men too? What would they contemplate as they stood, in silence, facing City Hall?

We are not alone in our quest. It is rare that I am near Golden Gate and Larkin on a Thursday afternoon, but last time I happened by, the people who stand for peace each Thursday were there. In a 2008 SFGate.com article titled Quiet Stand for Peace Each Week, several of the vigil keepers tell why they stand. The Gate quotes one, The Rev. Richard Schaper then of Grace Cathedral: "Some say, 'This is foolish; you can't change the world.' I understand that, but I do it to keep the world from changing me."

Actually, I hope I continue to be changed, as I have been changed standing for peace five minutes nearly every day; but I understand Reverand Schaper's sentiment. Standing for peace gives me a sense of equilibrium, a sense of balancing the fulcrum beneath me, that I might not succumb to the rage I feel at times, witnessing the devastation, pain and suffering that rampant greed and lust for power wreak in my community and across the world.

Standing for peace with Sharon gives me hope that we might yet build a better world for our grandchildren--and theirs. Deep within, at my very core, I know that when thousands of individuals join us in the piazza, join us in plazas all over the Earth, and stand in silence with visions of peace in their hearts, the vision of The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering will come true.

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We stand for peace as part of Grandmothers for Peace San Francisco, which we initiated after an OccupySF peace meditation. You can read about our experience and why we started Grandmothers for Peace Occupy SF on Yes, we did Sit4Change.

12/7/2011: Edited typo in "Yes, we did Sit4Change," immediately above.

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Disclosure: Should you click on the Amazon link in this post and make a purchase, it is possible I might make a few pennies on the sale. Wouldn't that be a thrill.
 

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Standing for peace, we are as stones

San Francisco City Hall from our standing
point November 26, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace

We stood for peace again this Saturday. I have to tell you, even though we are only two, I feel empowered.

When we stand before an edifice dedicated to assuring that the economic interests of a city are served, we stand at the seat of power. Here the influential, and those who do their bidding, make decisions that bring peace--or violence--to our lives.

In this world-class city, those decisions affect the lives not only of San Franciscans, but of people throughout the state and around the world. Whether we're banning plastic bags in supermarkets or shipping our collected "recyclables" overseas where the poorest of the poor sort our mountains of trash to salvage what can be melted down and remade, the impact of our city is felt near and far. Decisions made in this building ripple across the planet, like a skipping stone on water.

Let's face it. Making peace is about economics. All war, all injustice comes down to economics and greed. "You have what I want. If you won't give it to me, won't sell it to me for the price I'm willing to pay, I will take it from you."

Yet, because individuals stood up over the years in this town, walked and marched and stood in the halls of this building, many decisions made here reflect a concern for the well-being of our people. Not only the wealthy are served; but also those of us who serve the wealthy; and the thousands of immigrants who grow, harvest, prepare and serve our food, clean our homes and offices, cut our hair, and who work tirelessly to achieve a better life for themselves, their families and friends.

Green Vehicle Showcase
© L Kathryn Grace

Individuals made and continue to make calls, set up committees, and take action to lessen our collective impact on the environment as well. One example, immediately in front of me as I stand: nearly half a block of  recharging stations for electric cars, several of which bear the city seal on their doors. That sign in the background of the image to the right says "Green Vehicle Showcase," and in a small way, it is.

Of course, we are also a city known to house some of the most shameless--and shameful--human trafficking and sex trafficking rings in the country, for just one example of the other side, and a homeless population larger than the town my children called home for eighteen years, for another. All is not charm and beauty here.

These thoughts flow as I stand, at first flushed with the rush to get here, the too hot tea in my thermos burning my tongue and throat, watching tourists dance toward the shining glass and brass doors below the rotunda, fifth largest in the world, with a dome higher than that of the US Capitol building. They take pictures of one another posing first on this side of the street, then again on the steps of the building, under the great frieze of naked and partially clothed mythical figures.

We do not speak, my standing partner and I. We shift our bodies, arching our complaining backs and relaxing them, rocking on our feet to keep the blood flowing and the stiffness at bay.

Soon, my body settles into the rhythm, my mind quiets, the calm of standing in peace fills me, seems to grow and surround us. A white haired woman arrives, across the street, stands against a concrete pillar for nearly the entire hour. We wonder if she is the woman who told us she would stand with us today.

The longer the hour stretches, the more comfortable I am. The longer I stand, the more I feel what it would mean, what might happen if hundreds stood with us, thousands around the world. Though I gently return my focus to my breathing whenever my mind wanders, inevitably it fills with this image again and again and again: Grandmothers all over the world, standing in front of their city halls, their churches, mosques and synagogues, whatever symbols of power in their towns and villages, standing in silence, hearts open to the possibility of peace.

Changed, as we are changed standing here, they--we--just may begin to influence those within our sphere, who in turn may influence others, rippling, rippling, rippling. We are as stones.

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We stand for peace as part of Grandmothers for Peace Occupy SF, which we initiated after an OccupySF peace meditation. You can read about our experience and why we started Grandmothers for Peace Occupy SF on Yes, we did Sit4Change.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Two grandmothers stand for peace outside City Hall

San Francisco City Hall
November 19, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace

On Saturday, November 19, we did it. We two grandmothers stood for peace across from City Hall. Bottom line: We look forward to our next stand.

Here, as they say, is the rest of the story.

First, the bad news: Due to ambiguity around permits, we canceled the official meetup. The good news: We stood anyway. The best news: Two other women signed up and plan to stand with us in the future. Their support strengthens us.

How it felt, standing for peace in public

Ever since I came across Sharon Medhi's book, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World, I have wanted to stand exactly as those grandmothers did. On the way to City Hall, I felt excitement for a dream come true.

Beginning my breathing meditation, my mind filled with doubts. "What's the point?" "What possible good can this do?" "We are a couple of crazy old ladies." Thank goodness for meditation practice! Because of it, I let go of those thoughts. Calm filled the spaces. Soon enough, I realized it didn't matter. What mattered was that we were following our hearts, doing what feels right.

We stood together, hearts joined. At one point, far across the plaza, we noticed a solitary woman in a camel coat. She stood, unmoving, facing City Hall as we did, for about thirty minutes. Had she learned about us and come despite the cancellation? We may never know, but it encourages us deeply to imagine she came to stand for peace.

A police officer arrived, seemed to be checking us out, driving into the plaza and behind us. A homeless man found us curious and circled us frequently. Numerous injured, ill mentally or physically, passed our line of vision, some pushing carts overflowing with soiled belongings, some with little clothing and no other visible possessions. Elderly people came and went, some on canes, some in wheelchairs. Others stood between the trees, practicing Tai Chi and Qi Gong. A motorcyclist in a stars-and-stripes helmet parked his bike in front of us, set up a tripod and camera and appeared to film us among many other subjects.

White clouds flowed overhead, followed by heavier, darker clouds, then blue sky and glowing, cumulus puffs. I felt deep peace and calm as I stood, a peace that remains. I have a sense of possible: that it is possible peace will come in my lifetime, the lasting peace of which so many dream and for which so many work arduously day after day.

Something has shifted.

Instinctively, we know the power of peaceful hearts joined in purpose. All one has to do is look at the videos of the peaceful occupiers around the country to get a feel for that in action today. I'll share one of the most powerful examples with you tomorrow--hundreds, perhaps thousands of people of all ages and colors, teaching one another, working together in the open air to come to consensus about their objectives and next actions, assuring every voice is heard, every concern met.

As for the stand itself, I was grateful that my somewhat crickety body did not mind it so much. I had to stretch a bit now and then, but the hour passed pleasurably.

Sharon and I will stand again this Saturday, and I suspect the next and the next. We may have to change venues for a time. We may have to raise money to buy permits. We may have to bring those little tripod seats old people use when waiting at the bus stop! But we will be there.

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Disclosure: Should you click on the Amazon link in this post and make a purchase, it is possible I might make a few pennies on the sale. Wouldn't that be a thrill.

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Making peace in the face of unspeakable violence

© L Kathryn Grace

Please bear with me. This, my first post of the year, begins with tragedy and ends with faint rays of hope, rays of hope I pray will brighten and grow into a steady, unending glow that permeates every heart and soul on Earth.

What is

Yesterday I learned that a woman I admire and who has been wonderfully supportive of this blog, had lost two family members to violence within a few very short weeks of each other.

These separate, enormous tragedies are horrendous in themselves. While they preceded the Tucson shootings last Saturday, I learned of them after the fact, while still weeping for the families of the dead and injured there, where a young man carried a gun to a supermarket and killed six people, injured fourteen others. One eye witness reported that the man, before being hauled away in cuffs, smiled with apparent satisfaction as he viewed the carnage around him. Sadly, this scene is far too familiar. Here in the United States, pick any impoverished neighborhood, and likely there has been a shooting or stabbing death in the last week. In some cities, such deaths occur almost daily; and for some of our young people, killing another human being is a rite of passage; the tell-tale tattoos they sport, badges of honor.

A father weeps

So prevalent is the violence in this country that one father, Van Jones--whom you may remember as the short-lived Green Jobs Czar of the Obama administration, and before that, one of my Ordinary Heroes--breaks down in this audio recording of a 2005 talk with The Peace Alliance. He is speaking of his then seven-month-old son and his son's chances to reach old age intact, well-educated, and free of incarceration. You've seen the statistics on young, Black male survival rates to adulthood, right? How many of them die through violence, how many of them end up in prison?

Addicted to violence

© L Kathryn Grace

Should we be surprised? Under the guise of patriotism, we as a nation extol the virtues of combat. We celebrate the most horrific acts as entertainment. Heck, when Van Jones was growing up, our president glowingly glorified the fictional Rambo as his personal hero.

That's not all. Our country is constantly in a state of war somewhere in the world, has been almost continuously throughout my lifetime. Many in our country consider unpatriotic those who oppose these wars.

Given the hero worship we give to perpetrators of violence, fictional and real, why shouldn't young men of color, disenfranchised at every turn, not emulate the terrible scenes they grow up watching on television and in the movies? Those who want out of their gang-infested neighborhoods have few avenues of egress. One of the most open to them: War, sponsored by our government.

Exploiting, degrading, defiling and destroying human life

Then there are the underground, unofficial wars. Under siege from the drug cartels, Mexico reels from day to day, counting the bodies and burying the dead. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Taliban and Al-Qaeda bomb children in schools because they believe girls should not be taught to read and write and spell their own name, let alone learn about the world. Here in San Francisco, our police department periodically raids one "home" or another where children and women have been held in sexual slavery--in residential neighborhoods. Do you know your neighbor? They pull out not just one or two, but dozens of victims, usually brought into this country illegally, and often as not, quickly deported upon being "freed" to bear their shame and find a way to seek their living in a country that no longer wants them. San Francisco is just one small piece of that ugly puzzle.The list of human-on-human degradation and violence is unending. Or is it?

Dare we hope?

Image courtesy
The Peace Alliance (pdf file)

In the face of deep and unrelenting sorrow, dare we hope?

It may not be much. It may be the start of something big, possibly world changing. Tonight, I'm giving myself a big dose of hope, because tonight, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, and fully conscious of all the individual tragedies people face around the country, The Peace Alliance is hosting a national conference call. The call will be facilitated by John B. Kinyon, a trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. They call it a national soul searching moment. Here's what Aaron Voldman, director of the Student Peace Alliance, has to say about it in an email I received this morning:

This attack [the Tucson shootings] is a wake-up call for America, challenging us to step into our potential for compassion, for right relationships, and for a far more healthy political discourse. ... Now, more than ever, we must ask the questions that will stir each others' souls, and listen attentively to what emerges. Our role, as peacemakers, is a crucial one.

Dialing in is better than sitting on my puhtoodie

I'll be on this call. I need to join with others round the country to discuss ways to bring peace to our hearts, to our country and to our world. If you would like to lend your voice and your thoughts, join us at 9 pm Eastern, 6 pm Pacific. The presenters strongly recommend that you pre-register for the call, which is free, apart from any telephone charges you may incur. After you register to join the national conference call, you will be sent a phone number and unique access pin. If you can’t register, join the call at 916.235.1003, Code: 590543, again at 9 pm Eastern, 6 pm Pacific.

It's still up to us

Peace bed
© L Kathryn Grace

Neither you nor I can control what another human being chooses to do, but we do have the power to make peace an active force in our lives and in our nation. If you join the call tonight, I'd like to know what you think of it. This is one way we can stand for peace today.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

No more war!

A driver who stands for peace
© L Kathryn Grace

I can't take it anymore. Back in April, I began waging a war on garbage in our household. That moniker has bothered me from the get-go. I stand for peace. How in heaven's name are we going to build an Ordinary world if we keep using the language of violence? So no more war! From today forward, like the Greens, we are working toward becoming a zero waste household.

Right now, it's a daunting task. No garbage whatsoever? I'm reminded that back in 1991, when I first read Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet, I realized we would not win the climate change race, or eliminate poverty from the earth unless we Americans, individuals all, changed our ways. That meant me. I set two seemingly impossible goals for myself:

• Give up my car
• Give up meat

Twelve years later, still inching toward a more sustainable lifestyle, we sold my car--our only car by that time--and we have not owned a car since. Yes, we occasionally rent a City CarShare vehicle, and yes, I accept rides with others or take a taxi two or three times a month. So does my sweetie. We have not completely eliminated the need for fossil-fueled vehicles from our lives.

More, nineteen years later, we still eat meat, not as often as back then, when we might indulge our carnivore taste buds two meals every day. On average we eat meat about twice a week now, and usually more as a condiment than a main dish. Local cage-free chicken bits, for example, come on the pollo verde pizza I nosh with unabashed relish two or three times a month. On the other hand, we use so little meat that the pound of grass-fed ground beef sitting in our freezer is in danger of freezer burn. I can't remember the last time we had bacon in the house--our favorite and most difficult-to-give-up meat.

It is possible that I will never give up eating flesh (yuk!) entirely, but I care for it less and less. In fact, neither of us wants to handle raw meat any longer, so when we are standing at the butcher counter, deciding what to buy, we almost always walk away.

If it took me twelve years to give up my car, and after nineteen years I'm still working on meat, it may take ten or twenty years to reduce to a zero waste household. I hope not. I'll be in my eighties by then. I'll continue working on it, one item at a time, but with peace in my heart, not war.

This week, I'm almost out of toothpaste. My zero waste objective the next few days is to come up with a homemade toothpaste because I'm determined not to buy another plastic tube if I can help it.

Got any good toothpaste recipes?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

One Earth, one people, one love

© Bruce
CC Attrib. 2.0

Last week, while we celebrated the birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, mother of two, who has been on death row in Iran for five years, received a reprieve, of sorts.

Rather than burying Ashtiani in a pit up to her shoulders in a public square and stoning her to death, Iran postponed her sentence and said they would execute her by other means, not specified.

Ashtiani is one of twelve women and three men awaiting public stoning in Iran. Their crime: adultery. Unlike the women, the men will be buried only to the waist, their arms free. Lucky men. They have a chance. If the prisoner can free himself or herself from the pit before death, s/he is permitted to live.

Who can hold the world's suffering?

My inbox is full of pleas to help tortured individuals around the globe. They are in my prayers when I stand for peace, but oh, how frequently I cave, unable to bear witness to one more nightmare! Yet. What about the person who wrote that appeal? How does she hold this knowledge? What about the individuals who risk their lives to smuggle images and proof across borders that we, safe in our comfortable homes, might view the evidence, might fill out a short form registering our disgust, our plea to stop the carnage. For those who daily bear witness in their bodies and minds, what succor?

Listen to the wisdom of the grandmothers

This is not the world of Ordinary. Now is not the time to be faint of heart. It is time to stand, to take courage and strength in the work and wisdom of the thirteen indigenous grandmothers, already standing, and in the vision of another grandmother who stands and bears witness to suffering wherever she finds it.

In Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Alice Walker says,

I realized why Christians cross themselves. And why the people of Islam turn toward Mecca. I knew that I also needed a gesture of self-blessing that would, at the same time, symbolize blessing and protection of the world and its varied inhabitants.

I realized we, as humans, need a New World peace mudra and chant to help us through the days ahead, which will undoubtedly cause unprecedented suffering and pain. ... Spirit, the Grandmother Spirit of Earth, sent me this mudra and chant:

The mudra is to hold the thumb and first two fingers together, symbolizing unity, while making a circle around one's heart. A circle that covers as much of the body as possible. Or as large a circle as one has need. This is done three times, while chanting.

One Earth

One People

One Love

One Earth

One people

One Love

One Earth

One People

One Love

Please stand and let us together chant this blessing seven times; seven is the ideal number of people in a circle that is designed to grow the soul and transform the world.

Grandmothers, it is time to gather

What do you think of convening a virtual circle? Would you be part of mine? Can we count on each other to stand once a day, each in our own time, more if it feels right, and call on Grandmother Spirit, on the spirits of all the grandmothers, to heal the Earth, to heal us, to help us end the senseless suffering? Who do you know who might be willing to join our circle and bring this vision forward? Would you invite them?

One Earth, one people, one love.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

People with trucks stand for peace

Sure would like to shake this driver's hand.
Image: © L. Kathryn Grace

Every time I question the value of standing for peace five minutes (almost) every day, I run smack dab into something like this truck, reminding me there are other people who feel so strongly about peace, they've taken a stand.

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We make peace in a million
small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.