Rev. Charles Gibbs, Mrs. Nane Annan

As he prepared to ring the Peace Bell, which was cast from coins donated by children all over the world, the Secretary General reflected that this day is intended to grow into a day of global ceasefire where all people all over the Earth step back from violence and reflect on the practice of peace. He commented that people often say that 24 hours is not a very long time to devote to the practice of peace, but 24 hours is, he said, a long enough time for people to look across the barbed wire that separates them and ask what they might do to remove the need for the barbed wire. Having stood recently with URI’s Global Council and staff and many Korean colleagues looking across the barbed wire of the Demilitarized Zone in Korea, I have a heightened understanding of what Mr. Annan was talking about.

Following the ceremonial ringing of the bell in the UN’s peace garden, the action shifted to Conference Room 3 where 500 young people and a few selected adults (I was privileged to be among that number representing URI), gathered to hear UN Undersecretary General, Shashi Tharoor, Mrs. Nane Annan and several of the Ambassadors for Peace. The first two speakers read from entries about peace that had been submitted to the UN by young people from all over the world and can be found at http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/.

Elie Wiesel asked why we celebrate war and not peace. He said there is nothing beautiful or glorious about war. It is ugly and grotesque. Both sides suffer in war. It is time we found the words and the will to make peace seem more glorious than war, he said. Then he offered a gentle but clear challenge to the young people, It’s up to you to make sure that my past does not become your future.

A highlight of the program was the link, by internet video streaming, with young people in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland. The young people from Israel attend the Bridge Over the Wadi School where Jewish and Arab children study side by side. The school was founded in the midst of so much despair and violence by parents who believed it was their duty to give their children the opportunity to grow up differently, to create an experiential foundation upon which to build a better world. Based on the comments from the students, this noble experiment is working.

The young people from Northern Ireland attended the Hazelwood College (a high school) in Belfast where Protestant and Catholic young people study side by side. I was deeply impressed by the leadership of these young people, especially the young women, as they spoke of the power for transformation that comes with this sort of schooling. One person commented, “I’m a Protestant and I had never met a Catholic before coming here. Now I know many Catholics and I love them all very much. They’re my best friends.” Another remarked, “We’re not going to do what our fathers and uncles did before us, we’re going to break out of the mold.”

After an internet facilitated interaction with students from these schools, we heard from several young activists who are committed to inspiring and practical projects of transformation. One of the most stirring moments came when a young Israeli Jew, Yaakov “Kofy” Sadan, spoke of his experience in Seeds of Peace, a program that brings Jewish and Arab young people together to live and learn with and from each other in the US. Kofy spoke of how he hadn’t known that he would have to work so closely with Arab young people and sleep in the same room with them. He was terrified when, having grown up with the warning to never turn your back on an Arab or you’ll be stabbed in the back, he suddenly realized that he was to sleep with a Jordanian on one side of him and a Palestinian on the other side. “I didn’t sleep much that night because I was so afraid,” he said. But his fear passed as he came to realize that the “other side” are just human beings. He acknowledged that the conflict is complex, that peace is hard work and will take a long time, but he was clear that peace was much more possible because the seeds of peace were planted, a conviction shared by his Palestinian colleague, Ahmad Mamdouh Medhat.

Following these presentations, we participated in the World Peace Prayer Ceremony, led by Deborah Moldow. The ceremony began with the ringing of a peace bell forged from metal reclaimed from weapons. Nane Annan was invited to ring the bell on behalf of the nations of the world. I was honored to join her, on behalf of URI, representing the world’s religions. As it had two days before, this ceremony created a powerful field of prayer and global consciousness for peace.

Our next stop was across the street from the UN at the Isaiah Wall, so named because it bears the famous quotation from the prophet Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more.” Joining with Heidi Kuhn, founder of Roots of Peace, we participated in a ceremonial planting of a grapevine, celebrating her organization’s removal of 100,000 landmines in Afghanistan and the harvesting of 80,000 tons of table grapes from the newly freed fields.

Finally, we journeyed to the lower end of Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center to St. Peter’s Catholic Church, which, with St. Paul’s Episcopal Chapel, served as centers of spiritual support in the horrifying and yet hopeful days following the September 11 attacks.

The Youth Peace Walk began in upstate Grafton, NY and walked first to the World Peace Prayer Society's Imagine Peace Festival on September 18.  They continued their International Day of Peace observance by walking their prayers and hopes for peace to the UN and then onto the event, Courage to Forgive, held at St. Peter's Church near the former World Trade Center. 

Fr. Lyndon Harris, who led the ministry of St. Paul’s Chapel, urged those gathered to focus not on September 11, but on September 12, which marked an extraordinary coming together of countless people from all cultures, races, religions and walks of life to begin to build a new tomorrow out of the smoldering ashes of yesterday. He spoke compellingly of the need to plant gardens of forgiveness all over the world, not to excuse the evil that has been done, but to create visible expressions of our need to move from the experience of that evil into a different life based not on retribution but on transformation.

Marianne Williamson spoke eloquently about the human connection with the divine. She challenged all present to commit ourselves to the spiritual practices that will allow us increasingly to manifest the divine qualities of love, compassion and peace within ourselves and through our actions in the world for the good of all.

Following Marianne’s remarks, Deborah Moldow, for the second time that day, led a World Peace Prayer Ceremony. It was thrilling, in this church whose roof had been pierced by a piece of metal during the collapse of the Trade Towers, to see the flags of all the world’s nations waving, each distinct and beautiful, and together creating an inspiring whole that celebrated our distinctness and uplifted our underlying unity.

Having been given the honor, on behalf of URI, to offer the closing prayer, I noted that members of URI all over the world were joining with us in observing the International Day of Peace, and I commented that our prayers for all the nations of the world had filled the church with over 6 billion people—in that moment we were one. One not only with those we loved easily, but with those we didn’t like and may have found it excruciatingly hard to love. I prayed that we be guided in our work to see divine love manifest within us and through us as we lived into our call to be light to the world.