PROVIDENCE — Monks in saffron robes, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish and Christian clergy along with scores of others drawn by thoughts of peace held a silent and meditative walk past fluttering flags and through the gardens of the South Side Community Land Trust yesterday in what is becoming an annual tradition.
The silent walk, led by Joanne Friday, who is a Dharma teacher and the Buddhist chaplain at the University of Rhode Island, was part of a two-hour program of flag making, face painting, and drumming organized by the Peace Flag Project and the American Friends Service Committee to help celebrate the United Nations International Day of Peace.
Although the day has been celebrated on most years on Sept. 21, one of the Rhode Island co-organizers, Virginia Fox, said the celebration here was pushed back two days this year to accommodate the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
“If you were ever in Tibet, you’d notice that the Buddhists hang flags everywhere, each with prayers on them for peace, kindness, compassion and generosity,” she explained. “They believe that their wishes and prayers are carried around the world on the wind.”
Fox said that she and Jane Maguire, working independently, came to the idea that in Rhode Island it would be nice to encourage people to put their own wishes, hopes and dreams on flags with the idea that these ideas can also travel the world.
The resulting Peace Flag Day project drew only 40 people when they held the first one at the Quaker Meeting House three years ago, but 120 came the following year at Providence’s Market Square Park, and 160 last year.
“Everything big starts small,” she said. “Our idea is to have an event that will allow people to hold peace, embody peace, and to be about peace and see what happens. I like to say this in an event that can be a start of a ripple that goes out so more and more people think about peace and how they live with each other …
“When they talk about peace, most people talk about finding their own personal inner peace, or they’ll talk about world peace. This is about the middle part where I believe people can have an effect.
“How we live and how we treat people every day. It means fair pay for a day’s work. It means being kind to the people in our family and in the world. It’s about what ordinary people can do.”
Friday, the Buddhist teacher, said that Gandhi once remarked that “we need to be the change we want to see in the world.”
“That’s what we are trying to do here. We’re trying to make as many people as possible come together, walk together and be peaceful. The thing that causes us to be at war is our sense of separation from each other.”
Rabbi Alan Flam, Jewish chaplain at Brown University and head of the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis, appeared to agree, saying that peace is not the absence of war, but a building of relationships with people with whom one has been estranged.
“One of the things that I talked about on Yom Kippur,” he said, “is falling into despair. Anyone who does activist work knows how easy it is to become frustrated and even despairing, given how complicated and broken this is.”
rdujardi@projo.com