Friends on the Vigil, holding a 'Quakers for Peace' banner at the front. Photo: By Michael Preston for Britain Yearly Meeting.
Stepping up: Steve Day on the Silent Walking Vigil for Peace
‘This peace connection dives deep.’
In the aftermath, I receive message after message: ‘Hope you got back home okay. It was a remarkable experience.’
At one point, as the Silent Walking Vigil For Peace wound its slow way down to Downing Street, then back up the other side towards Trafalgar Square, it lined both sides of Whitehall. It did feel ‘remarkable’. Hundreds and hundreds dressed in white or wearing blue Quaker Peace t-shirts. The modest ‘count’ was 800 people, some say a thousand, all of us held in the Light by Quakers we’ve never known personally. This peace connection dives deep. So many people told me, ‘I’ve never done this sort of thing before.’ Nor me, not quite like this.
