Every year
Please copy this and spread it around, we depend on YOU to spread the word.
I know this is a lot to read, but I
ask you to please read it through. Think about how a large demonstration could
change the way our leaders make decisions. If we start teaching our children by
example, instead of just saying things and not following through ourselves,
maybe, just maybe, they will understand the importance of their actions and
deeds. It is a simple way to teach our children that we do stand for living in
a peaceful world. That humans, as a species, can learn from their mistakes, and
live in balance with the planet, instead of destroying everything we touch. If
we can instill that profit from corrupt means will be a loss for mankind, and
endanger our planet's ability to enable us to survive, then perhaps they will
have lives that will be worth living in the future. You've heard it all before,
but haven't chosen to act. I am making it so easy for you to set an example, if
you don't, you will have no one to blame but yourself. It's about time we all
participate in the lessons of the way the web of life works. It is the same as
we all learned in school. You take away one piece of the web, and the whole
thing will collapse. It is a truth that has been taught but ignored through our
own greed and selfishness. Lets start with a simple act that will help us
realize how easy it is to make that change.
May Peace prevail on
Earth,
Peaceguy
Peaceguy's Prayer
May the
people on this planet be changed.
Changed from hatred to love,
Changed
from greed to giving,
Changed from selfishness to selflessness,
Changed
from apathy to action,
Changed from jealousy to joy over someone's
accomplishments,
Changed from intolerance to acceptance,
Changed from
being destructive to being constructive,
Changed from fighting to
peace,
Changed from killing to protecting life,
Changed from censorship
to freedom,
Changed from ignorance to education,
Changed from fearing
our differences to rejoicing our variety.
May we each take it upon
ourselves to feed the hungry, cure the sick,
house the homeless, educate
the illiterate, love the unloved,
compete to do the right thing instead of
winning at any cost,
make heros that teach our children to
make the
world a better place instead of glorifying violence and war,
stand up and
speak out against things that are wrong
instead of sitting back and waiting
for someone else,
demand honesty from our governments,
demand honesty
from ourselves.
May we each take responsibility for our own actions
and realize that by refusing to change ourselves,
we condone all the evils
in the world.
If one person changes they teach others by example,
who
in turn change and teach more,
one person becomes as a pebble rolling down
a mountain,
picking up more pebbles as it continues,
becoming an
avalanche of change.
It can happen, it must happen, it will happen.
To make this prayer work, you have to change yourself.
Copyright 1997
Don Morris. Feel free to use this anywhere and any place. All I ask is to
reference this website if you do.
Here is my pebble to start this
avalanche,.... hopefully you will add your pebble
and together we can
demonstrate how easy it is to make a grassroots movement work.
Over twenty years ago I had a vision of creating a non-religious, non- governmental,
world inclusive, grassroots movement for a day to promote peace. I am no rocket
scientist, I am just a regular person who goes about my daily tasks to survive
in this world,... just like everyone else. I had the vision but no direction,
and did my best to make the demonstration easy. But I failed because people
look for some kind of director, some kind of organization to lead them and tell
them what to do. I failed to realize that petitions are a dime a dozen, and
concerts and large gatherings usually take some kind of organizing to pull off
and corporate sponsors and all the usual payments and permits associated with
it all. This was something I just didn't have the ability or time to do.
Although, I spent all my spare time working on it, I didn't have the
ingredients to make it happen. There are thousands of media outlets to contact
and they want details for each place and times and all the associated media.
All I have is a website. It was discouraging to me to see how difficult it was
to put something like this together. I stagnated and became depressed. I didn't
realize the way to make this happen. One morning I sat typing a reply to an
email and all of a sudden my vision was made complete. I needed to ask for
help. Your help. World Peace Day, November 17th, is what, I hope, will empower
us to make our leaders, and our future generations, take notice. You think mass
demonstrations don't work? If they don't, then how would the now cliche
"Million woman/man/ march" become part of our everyday language? The problem
with trying to congregate millions of people into one place is that it leaves
out so many. I think the path to peace begins at home. It's an inner decision
that each individual has to make. But a mass demonstration IS neccessary. So
we're having a mass demonstration. The location is wherever you happen to be.
This is the only way to really make terrorists, politicians and world leaders
take notice that THE PEOPLE want peace! Military might and aggression have been
proven time and time again not to do anything but create a world of fear,
violence, and destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are a deterrent, but the
only way to real peace is through negotiation and resolving the issues that
created the problems. By gathering together we provide the pebble to start the
avalanche towards peace.
First of all I want to make sure everyone
realizes this starts with you. There is no "organization" or corporation that
is coordinating this. There is no official logo, no corporate sponsorship, no
donations or money needed. It is a grassroots effort to make a change for
yourself. If you are in business and want to use it to make money by selling
T-shirts or trinkets, it makes no difference to me. As long as people don't
think that the money gained comes back to peaceday.org, because to all who want
to know, it doesn't. Use your conscience as your guide. I want people to know
that money is really not needed for this grassroots effort, it is a display of
people wanting to live in a world of peace. The only instructions
are,.....pray, focus, or meditate for peace. There is no set time table, it
will be all 24 hours of November 17. There is no printed media other than
this web page, you are free to create your own. Find a few people WHEREVER YOU
ARE, take a few moments to hold hands in a circle and meditate together for
peace for a few minutes. Please read on because there is something to reinforce
what you will do on November 17th.
A couple of years back Susan Parker and I started corresponding over the web. I always admired her project because it had results that people could see and feel. I had the pleasure of visiting a Sadako Peace Park located on the grounds of the "La Casa Maria" in Santa Barbara, California. Hanging from the trees and bushes were little paper cranes that had been left by people who had visited the park. In the center was a huge eucalyptus tree. It made such an impression on me that I decided that some day I would make a paper crane project of my own.
As I sat thinking about the current aggression in the Middle East and here we go again killing the poor people that have to put up with leaders who are making all these poor choices, I suddenly realized what we all can do! We can fold some paper cranes and send them to as many leaders we can find the addresses for. Lets make an impression on our leaders, no, lets shock our leaders into seeing that we all want to live in peace. I am hoping that our leaders get so many folded paper cranes that they will complain to me to take down my site and end this paper crane deluge.It can only be done with your help. They say if you fold 1000 cranes you will be granted your wish. Lets fold a couple of million cranes and wish for world peace. Ahh but lets also start to hang cranes around in the public. Lets make it so people will see them in shopping malls and in parks, hang a crane in your office. You get the idea. Lets make it so everyone gets a chance to be reminded about peace. Inform your friends about it so when people ask about all the cranes they keep seeing, someone will be able to explain it to them and get them started folding their own. It will be interesting to see how long it will be before I start seeing cranes that other people have folded. Hanging from street signs as I am driving around. Just put them in visible locations. Like the fence in front of the White House ;)
Thank-you for helping, Peace and
love,
Peaceguy
Here is what to do
Take some junk mail, because you were going to throw it away anyway.
Fold it into
paper cranes.
Either send them to a world leader of your
choice,....or
Hang them in a place that is visible to the public.
Thanks to http://www.sadako.org/ for the instructions!
Or mail to the leaders of your choice.
President Barack H. Obama
The Whitehouse
Washington, DC 20500
tel 1-202-456-1414
fax 1-202-456-2461
president@whitehouse.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/
Find your elected Congressperson
Find your Senator
This place
is a great online source of World Leader's email addresses.
ADDRESS
DIRECTORY FOR THE POLITICIANS OF THE WORLD
These are consulates addresses for many countries.
http://www.state.gov/www/travel/consular_offices/fco_index.html
Secretary-General Ban-Ki-moon
Office of the
Secretary-General
United Nations
New York, NY 10017
The
Carter Center Updates on world Conflicts is a good place to start looking
for places to send cranes.
If you don't want to fold cranes please place
this ribbon on your webpage, or print it and place it where people can see you
are wishing for peace. If you do, can you please link it back to this
website.
On November 17, drive with your headlights on as a public demonstration for peace, and think about peace as you go through your daily activities. Fold some cranes and place them around your city.
May Peace Prevail On
Earth,
Peaceguy
Due to the proliferation of spam and people using peaceday.org as a return address to get people to open the mail, peaceday will no longer send email out. If you get an email from peaceday.org trash it, it's a virus or a spam. I also would like to explain one more thing. Back when I first started this website there were no other websites about a peace day. As more organizations came online, I began to be questioned about other days that were considered days of peace. The most adamant was a group of people from an organization called Pathways to Peace. They promoted a day that was sponsored by the United Nations called "Hear the Children Day," which was celebrated on the 3rd Tuesday of September each year. At first they told me that I was wrong about World Peace Day, that the U.N. day was world peace day even though it wasn't called world peace day. They have told me I needed to give them my domain several times over the years. There has even been one person who had told people he talks to that my domain was his own and I even got letters from the people he corresponded with asking him questions. My website, peaceday.org, used to be a very large website and I promoted all the peace days globally around the year. I've always tried to help whatever organization that asked. All of a sudden peaceday.org started getting attacks like mail bombs and in 2003 someone destroyed the server that held peaceday. I received threatening emails too, telling me they were going to come to my house and kill me. Computer viruses were sent out with peaceday.org as the return mail address. The people who hosted my site said the backup tapes were so corrupted that peaceday.org would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. At the same time this was happening I was having health problems. I ended up having brain surgery which took a lot out of me. I decided to just make peaceday.org simple, back to my first intention which was promoting the day I started. I had neither the energy nor the time to focus on building a new site. So here peaceday sits a shadow of it's former self. While I am not accusing anyone of anything, I found it interesting at the same time a person from Pathways to Peace would all of a sudden start writing me asking when I was going to close peaceday for good? He stated that he wanted me to give him the website because he promoted the real peaceday. Anyway, of course I said no thanks and peaceday.org has been here doing it's thing for over 20 years now. When I die I have decided to give this website to an organization that really deserves it. It will not be anything UN related due to the fact that the U.N. doesn't allow certain countries in as members and World Peace Day November 17th is for the whole world to celebrate. I want to say that the Native American Peace and Prayer Day, June 21st always had a group of people that worked alongside peaceday.org instead of acting against it. They are true messengers of peace. I would like to thank them for their years of support. No matter what day is celebrated for peace, peacday.org will always support the effort no matter how small. Thanks for listening.
Just to make it clear, this is my website and domain. I've had it online since 1993. I paid for it all out my own pocket, and did most of the work myself. Out of all the peacedays I've been involved with or promoted, and there have been quite a few, the UN September 21st is the ONLY one that excludes certain countries from it's member nations and therefore is the only one that I think could never be promoted as "world peace day." That may seem harsh, but the way I look at it, I was online before the UN. I helped their volunteers set up their pages as I have helped many other peace days. I have promoted lots of peace days and always included the UN day up until my server was attacked. They have never once helped to promote my website or my day of peace, never once offered to help with my pages that had nothing to do with peace days, and in fact their volunteers have always had the arrogance to keep sending me emails letters that I should just give up my website for them to use. Never once have they offered anything in return, not time, not promotion, not even a single link back to my pages. Letting them have this domain will never happen while I'm alive. I've prepaid peaceday.org for a lot of years. When I die it will be left in my will to a group that repaid my help over the all those years. That won't be anyone using it for the UN day. Here's my suggestion if they want peaceday.org so bad. Change their September 21st date to the World Peace Day, November 17th. Then maybe I'll consider it. If they aren't willing to do that, lol, then please leave me alone.
As I have always said peace is up to you. Because of the harassing email and snail mail I get from people who should know better, for now there is no longer any contact information for peaceday.org. People who have been friends for all these years already know how to contact me.