Though the United States of America is both the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth we are not sending any kind of message to our citizens as well as the world community on just how much we desire and value peace. We have many monuments in our nation's capital, many as war memorials and monuments but not a single one for peace. If you reflect for a moment on just what kind of message that sends one quickly realizes we must rectify this now.

In order to accomplish the construction of a peace memorial we must show our leaders the level of commitment and desire which we share in creating an environment for peace. Peace not only in the world but in our country and our families. I propose we construct a series of sculptures on the edge of the Washington D.C. capital mall which address peace in:

The world
Our nations cities and villages
Our local communities and families
Religious peace
Racial peace
Peace amongst the sexes
And other major peaceful topics where peace is needed and desired.

These are but a few ideas which we can build on to create a series of permanent peace sculptures which would surround an area on the mall. It is too difficult to get land dedicated in the nations capital therefore I propose we ring one of the blocks on the mall in D.C. so that the mall can continue to be used in the manner it is today for concerts, frisbee and other community events. In this way the only hurdle in front of us would be permission to place the peace sculptures on the mall. I am confident that artists would happily donate their ideas and work to create these thematically peaceful art works on the mall. We could lobby as well for the area on the mall where these sculptures stand to be renamed the National Peace Monument.

So what should you do if you are interested in making a peace monument a reality? First log into Facebook and join our group for the creation of this important monument. Without the numbers to show that we are serious we will not be able to persuade any of the leaders in the country on this issue. Second if you are an artist who creates outdoor artworks please send us a sketch of an idea you have which addresses peace in any of the above examples or one of your choosing. If you are not an artist then help us by thinking of peace areas which should be addressed by the monument. You can do this by writing on the wall on the Facebook group. Any other ideas or suggestions you may have a re welcome and we hope you will visit our Facebook site in order to participate on this project. Let's make this largest group anywhere to demonstrate our resolve and to make this peaceful demonstration a reality just as fast as is possible.

Thank you for your time and below there is photo of the mall with blue dots on it which could represent where we intend to put the sculptures.

Peace to you and yours!

I have had several conversations with people who have asked what would a national peace monument accomplish? They ask would it simply exist to have a place where groups gather to protest for peace? In my mind the answer is no. The only way I can explain this through my experiences with the Viet Nam war memorial.

Every single time I have visited the Viet Nam war memorial I am struck by the power of that monument. I can be walking towards it on a beautiful warm and sunny day and as I approach its vicinity, I can palpably feel the pain and sorrow that now exists there. On several occasions I have been there when there is no one there but me. I think the emotional toll and personal impact of that war has been imprinted on that memorial and the grounds it occupies. The ground has become charged with the emotions of the feelings of the people who visit that memorial.

Of course that war was the one I experienced most personally because throughout my career I have worked with so many individuals who went through that horrific experience. Therefore I will admit I may be bringing some of this with me but I can honestly say I had these same experiences as a very young man and the experience never really changed for me. Therefore I don't think that my experiences can be accounted for simply by what I brought to those hallowed grounds.

A national peace monument would become imprinted with the emotional feelings which are felt by many individuals. It would become a place where I think people would experience the idea of peace in a very different way than occurs through our analytical minds. Since there are so many people and groups who use the Mall, I think it would serve to transmit our requirements for along with our desires for peace in all its forms. Therefore in answer to the question you may have as to what a peace monument would be used for, I can only answer, the potential uses for it are limited only by what we bring to it through our individual minds. Collectively I think the answers are virtually without limit.

A little background on the project.

One day while Stumbling on the Internet I came across a kind of photo blog. I found it here if you would like to check it out. The blog has two photos on a webpage which on the left picture of a Washington DC monument says “All the monuments they built were dedicated to war.” On the right on the 2nd photo of a peace sign spray painted on the side of an ordinary concrete wall it says “We had to make the monuments to peace ourselves.”

I have lived in and around Washington DC for almost 50 years now and thought, I think this is really true. I sent the link of the blog to family and friends and with my thoughts. After some discussions they all agreed, which startled some of them because they had never really thought about it either. I let the thought go for about a month when Mike Behn, a very close long time friend, invited me to a workshop that Genpo Roshi and his Big Mind team were having in DC. At the workshop Genpo said that he wanted to talk with the national leadership about his work. It is very Zen cored and integrated with personal peace. After a few weeks the two thoughts came together and I thought if he wants to talk with the national leadership then Genpo would need a national platform. I thought about the fact that we didn't have a national peace monument and that the confluence of these two ideas could be perfect together. I sent Genpo and his team an email telling them about the idea.

So where we are right now is in the process of accruing enough people to show the national leadership that we all care about peace in all of its forms so deeply that we want a monument dedicated to peace in our nations capital. So please join Facebook and the National Peace Monument group on Facebook so that we can demonstrate what many of us suspect, that there are millions of us who think exactly this way. Also please tell as many of your family and friends as possible so that we can accelerate this project. I say accelerate becuase I really don't think it is a matter of if people agree, but rather that they simply have no idea that as late as the the 21st century the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world does not have a national peace monument.

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