Join peace walk, Friend readers urged
‘We are now seven months into the planning for A Silent Walking Vigil For Peace.' Steve Day, co-organiser.
The organisers of the Quaker peace walk have invited readers of the Friend to join the September gathering. Steve Day, co-organiser of the vigil, said: ‘We are now seven months into the planning for A Silent Walking Vigil For Peace, an event that began in my mind as ‘A Quaker Peace Rally’ in the Friend magazine and, gradually, almost by some spiritual osmosis, has taken on a deeper template… For those of us involved in its planning, this walking vigil has already reached a collective depth of understanding that is far greater than ourselves. It has brought us together, not merely as “friends” but as kith and kin.’
The vigil in central London on 19 September will start at noon in Victoria Embankment Gardens (in the Ministry of Defence Gardens), beginning and closing with a short Meeting for Worship. The route ends at the back of St Martins in the Fields, just off Trafalgar Square. ‘We will be walking quietly at a slow pace,’ the organisers write on the ‘Silent Walking Vigil for Peace’ website. ‘A walking vigil is an inherently peaceful activity: not a protest, not a march, not a demonstration.’
Describing it as ‘a spiritual act of our humanity’, Steve Day said the ‘loud silence’ will be ‘an elegy for the many generations to come after us. We reach out to the readership of the Friend, come and join us. Our children’s children’s children will ask of us, “What did you do?”’
Quakers in Newark are also hosting a prayer hub (in person and online) for the duration of the walk.
