Ordinary Hero: Sharon Mehdi

Image copyright 2009
L. Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

She wrote a story for her granddaughter, not yet born, about two grandmothers who stood for peace. She shared the story with some friends. They shared the story with their friends. The story begins like this.

On a buffety, blustery early summer day, when the news was bad and the sky turned yellow, a strange thing happened in the town where I live.

The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World

Tomorrow, as we did last year and as thousands did the year before, women from all over the world will do a strange thing. For five short minutes, we will stand silently in parks, in churches, on public streets, on courthouse steps and statehouse steps, on mountaintops, at the seashore, next to rivers and in our own gardens. Like the grandmothers in the story, we will stand for peace.

For visioning a world of peace; for visioning that two silent women, dressed in comfortable shoes and their Sunday best could stand unmoving with one thought in mind; for visioning that women all over the world would understand the silence and the standing and the vision and join them, each in their village, town, city; and for visioning that sons and daughters everywhere in the world, in response to their mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunties and cousins standing silently for peace would drop their weapons and choose peace; for making the vision of the Village of Ordinary a little more real, the Ordinary Heroes Award is offered with deepest gratitude to Sharon Mehdi. (Updated 5/10 with link to Mehdi's web page.)



Find out who is standing for peace in your area and join us.