Peace is enough

From 19 to 25 September, Damiaan walked along as a route guide for about 300 people who carried the world peace flame or sang to the 136-kilometre ‘walk of wisdom around Nijmegen’ spread over seven days. A final report.

Peace is enough

We are called to love.
You’d like to shout it in this world: to the soldier in the bulldozer,
against the child with the stone […]

Against the martyr with the knife in his hand
Against the protester with the banner
for a refugee camp

But above all, say it to yourself,
When you’re annoyed, when you’re angry, when you’re not believed.
part of the love that every human being carries within him […] (Felicia Dekkers with the exception of not italics)

At the kick-off of the peace week, I leave. We divided the route into 28 different sections and managed to find a flame carrier for each section. I look forward to a colourful succession of people: from practising Muslims to skeptical philosophers, from Hindus to Bahai’, from Zen practitioners to members of an Apostolic Society. There are a few yoga teachers, but also just two friends who love walking and want to support peace. Personally, I walk on the theme of struggle: the struggle with myself, the other and the world. 

The World Peace Flame: a small, sweet, but stable flame in a copper miner’s lamp. The flame is lit with light that comes from a fire that was brought together in 1999 with flames from all seven continents. The fire was flown alive, often in Air Force planes. Every three or four kilometers, the flame is handed over to a new flame carrier, who has often brought a few other people with whom the flame is shared.

From the very beginning, a funny and at the same time moving ritual is created during the handover: the flame bearer is also given a ribbon with white flags on which most runners write a peace wish at the end of their journey. Most humbly bow their heads when the ribbon is put around their heads. One wears it with frivolity, the other with dignity as if it were a mayor’s necklace. One of the flame bearers carefully places a hand on the ribbon that hangs right against her belly: “I can feel the warmth on my belly.”

The first evening we are awaited, welcomed in a small church: a hedge of lights in the twilight, through which we bring the lamp inside. A candle is lit with the flame. We sing. We remain silent. Afterwards there will be wine.

Leave the path of cynicism
Regain a child’s innocence
Accept the consequence
that peace begins with yourself. (Freek de Jonge)

Day 2: In a war cemetery, the flame bearer, a retired architect from Amsterdam, walks between memorial stones of more than a thousand young soldiers, flown here from the sea 70 years ago to die for the freedom of a country most of them did not know.  “One candle can light thousands of other candles without shortening its lifespan” (Buddha). The flame bearer staggers for a moment, the lamp swaying back and forth in his hand, which he holds high as if waving incense, bringing memories to life, respect and love for life that was blown out. High up on the hill, he hands over the flame of peace to a German and his girlfriend from Russia. In silence, hand in hand, they steer the lamp across the border.

Day 3: two refugees walk with us, no further than the border of the Netherlands because they are not allowed to travel further. An immense forest. Three women from Columbia who walk along for a while. We remain silent. We’re talking. We sing a song. The refugee from Kashmir shows cartoons about the manipulation of images in the press, for a moment his beaming voice and face are serious, then he laughs again: “When I’m sad, I walk into the woods. The trees sing to me a song of love.”

Later that day, when I guide two women through the fields, one of them picks up a feather.

Day 4: in an old monastery of the Capuchins we eat eige

Soup with bread and cheese on boards. With thirty people we sing ‘peace and all good’ while holding hands for a while. Mantras are sung to accompany on keyboards and guitar, the player closes his eyes – I follow him on his way in.

Day 5: in the pouring rain we are welcomed in front of the station of Wijchen by the pandit of a Hindu temple. The flame travels for 500 meters through as many as twenty pairs of hands to the temple, where the lamp is placed behind a curtain after dinner. With the sound of trumpets, the flame emerges and the curtains open: next to large, brightly colored statues of gods, our little lamp of peace adorns. The pandit: for us, all images of God are a manifestation of the one Divine. We will never try to convert others to our own, because that movement doesn’t change anything. I tell him that my faith is cordiality. Cordiality in many guises, across the boundaries of culture or religion, of country or personality.

On day 6, a hiker bends down by the side of a ditch, picking something edible that he offers me. A hedge of trees waves at us as we slowly cross a highway. In the garden of two artists, we light tea lights with fire from the flame of peace, after which we push them away in boats, onto the pond.

Day 7
“People asked.
People are being asked.
Urgently people wanted
people in the midst of people.” (Coert Poort)

I think to myself, in how many guises do people have to see cordiality before they believe in love again? Before they know that love – cordiality is an appearance of it – needs no conditions: only a heart to be received in. We organize this peace week as a walk of wisdom almost without money: we do not charge an entrance fee and do not have to pay an entrance fee. Almost the whole week I get my food and drink from others, often without ever having seen them before.

“For by giving, we receive.” It’s true, Francis. People are happy to give: their time, their spare room, chapel or meditation room, food and drink. A member of the Apostolic Society walks beside me when he sees that I am tired. Silently, just walking beside me. Until, after a while, I sigh. “Good,” he nods kindly.

Both the Christians of the Jacob’s Church and the Alevi Muslims are happy to commemorate a monument to fallen soldiers. Just as they find it valuable to hand over the flame of peace to each other halfway across the railway bridge. 

We are not saving people this week, nor are we calming the war. But peace shows itself in the many forms of cordiality between people from different backgrounds. Between all their beautiful gestures, Love shines. For me, peace is its fruit. And the struggle? I forgot about that one. Peace is enough for me.

Damien Brass

 

Photo (above, tractor): Bart Kouwenberg