Five minutes

There's no time like the present to begin a new habit, so yeah, though I stood for peace earlier today, I set my phone to tone a bell one minute before six each evening. When it went off, I was surprised, momentarily forgetting what it was about. My sweetheart and I were watching a video. It's about a man who has endured grave injustice. All the people in his life are affected one way and another. The acting is very good.

Standing in my bedroom, I tried to be present with the golden evening sunlight illuminating houses on the hill. My left shoulder was painful with tension, my hands in loose fists. My brain felt tight against my skull, and I was full of the pained and strained faces of the video, their suffering so visible. My heart hurt, but not with the delicious feeling of the morning sky. It really hurt this time. I felt squeezed.

This is what I do for entertainment and relaxation--watch a fictional story of a terrible miscarriage of justice. Judging by the state of my body, this is not healthy R&R. For most of the five minutes, I had to focus on my breathing, as in the Ten Minute Meditation, just to reach a state of peace. The time was short, but I feel calmer now. Pain in shoulder gone. I'm forgoing the rest of the video.

I stood for peace--II

Today is the second Mother's Day I stood for peace on a San Francisco hill, looking across a sunny expanse of grass and city scape to a nearly cloudless sky so blue it made my heart hurt. You know that feeling? Goodness.

The chain link fence surrounding the park reminded me of all the prisoners locked behind fences and doors around the world. It would be easy to collapse in hopelessness at the thought of the heavy hands and sadistic hearts that brutalize children, women and anyone who has something someone else wants, or whose beliefs differ from those of the person with the whip.

What came back to me, again and again as the wind brought fresh air to my lungs and cooled my face, was the image of Sharon Mehdi's grandmothers standing silently all day long, saying not a word, moving not an inch. (How did those menopausal bladders hold up all those hours?) Thousands of women and men joining them all over the world. Children everywhere, of every age putting down their rifles, their bayonets, their bazookas and, perhaps, their bomb-laden backpacks and saying no to violence.

Yes we can. Yes we can stop the violence. Oh sure, you're thinking five minutes on a windy hill all by myself once a year does nothing, right? Yup, standing last year, I wondered the same thing. But it's still true: Peace begins at home.

Throughout the year, whenever I have responded with anger to a situation--and there have been many times--I remembered my tiny five-minute Mother's Day stand for peace. I remembered how hopeless I felt at the rage, power and greed that human beings indulge in the service of harming others. I knew that if I expected those people somehow to make peace in their hearts and lives, I first must make it in mine in this moment at this time. Could it be as simple as exchanging a momentary irritation for kindness?

Have I succeeded? Not immediately, not every time. Making peace is a work in progress. Right now, I am in a state of discord with a family member. Each day, I spend too much energy working through negative feelings, seeking compassion and understanding. Yet I remain judgmental, resisting. Repeatedly, I must sit with my feelings, acknowledge them, process the difference between my responses and my intent to make peace. I am old enough to know that I am not alone in experiencing this. Perhaps you experience this. Millions of us across the globe want to make peace in our families, our work places, and the world at large.

So as I stood on that hill today, I knew that I do not want to be standing alone next year. On Mother's Day 2010, I want some of you who dream of peace standing there with me. Oh, and I want so much more. I want to stand in a park filled with people--hundreds, perhaps thousands of people standing silently for peace for five minutes. No speeches, no bands, no placards, no hoopla. Just people walking one by one, in twos and threes, whole families, to their neighborhood parks and standing silently for five minutes of peace, mingling afterward to share their feelings about standing in community with this one common goal: Making peace.

I want to stand in a park filled with people--hundreds, perhaps thousands of people standing silently for peace for five minutes.

Imagine millions of people, all over the earth, remembering all year long how it felt to stand for five minutes, breathing peace. Imagine them changing their lives at home, at work, at school, in committee, waiting in line, driving down the freeway. Imagine choosing peace instead of anger. Choosing common ground instead of discord. Choosing a smile instead of a finger. (You know what I mean.) Imagine how that daily consciousness might spread.

How to get from here to there?

I will start. For the next year, I will stand for peace five minutes of every day. Wherever I am at 6:00 p.m. each evening, I will stand for peace. If I am with people, I will excuse myself, leave the room and stand for peace. If I am riding the bus, I will leave my seat (increasingly, as I age, I am lucky enough to have one), grab a pole and stand for peace. If I am caring for my granddaughter, I will do everything possible in that moment to stand for peace. If it is not possible, I will tell her about peace and why it is so important to devote that five minutes to peace. She may not understand, but I will share it all the same.

It's a little scary making this commitment. I've rarely been on time in my life. I've kept few rituals and never at the same time every single day for a whole year, so I'm asking for your support. I need your encouragement. As often as I can, I'll write a little blurb about the day's stand right here. I hope anyone reading this will post comments frequently. Your comments fuel me. Should you feel like taking a five minute stand for peace yourself now and then, I hope you'll tell me about it and how you felt about it. If you're a blogger or a Tweeter, I hope you'll start a conversation about standing for peace. On our tweets, we can use the hashtag #5minutes. Together, we can make a difference in the world, one moment of kindness, one smile, one prayer, and five minutes a time.

Will I see you in my neighborhood next year? Or read about you standing in yours?


The images in this post were taken on the way to and from the park today. The signs, new in this children's garden, were serendipitously on point, don't you think?

Stand for peace on Mother's Day

Women standing for peace. Tomorrow women all over the world will stand for peace for the third Mother's Day in a row.

Image courtesy standingwomen.org

There is probably nothing any of us wish for our children more than peace. Sharon Mehdi's delightful tale,The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering, inspires us on a visceral level. Somehow we get the power of this silent gesture. When we read the story, we feel it in our bodies. We know that standing silently, one by one, is enough.

Spare five minutes and stand for peace with your family and friend's at 1 PM tomorrow your local time. That's all it takes. This explains why.



Though a year old, the primal necessity of the message has not changed, don't you agree?

Five minutes of silence. Stand alone. Stand with your family and friends. Stand on the courthouse steps. Stand in your backyard. Bring a bell to mark the beginning of your stand and the end. Afterward, use your action as a springboard for discussion with your loved ones. How much do you want peace in the world? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Maybe what you'll ask for this Mother's Day is peace. That's the Ordinary thing to do.

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.

New do

If you're a regular reader, you can't help but notice the new face on the blog. I've been wanting to switch to three columns for a couple of years, and finally learned how to do it. I'll be tweaking off and on when I can grab a few minutes, so you may notice other changes along the way. What do you think so far?