 Okay, I will put it in my mouth. There you go. Lollipop mic. We have just been listening to a beautiful shaku-shaku-hachi thing. It's a Japanese bamboo flute that is incredibly difficult to play. You wouldn't know that from listening to Scott Fortney here, but he has been studying for years to play this. Anyway, here we are, and it is not just in Montpelier, but around the world that people are gathering today to remember Hiroshima and to dedicate themselves to working for peace. It's hard to imagine the horror that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed. It dropped the first and so far only two atomic bombs in history. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, whose care is for the whole world and not for any one nation, was speaking in Hiroshima this morning at a ceremony commemorating. This is a bit of what he said. Tens of thousands of people were killed in this city in the blink of an eye. Women, children, and men were incinerated in a hellish fire. The quarters, my spell check did something. A quarter of a century later, three quarters of a century later, we must ask what we have learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city in 1945. What have we learned? Crises with grave nuclear undertones are spreading fast. From the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Humanity is playing with a loaded gun. We are just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. So says the head of the United Nations. This is grim and overwhelming. What can we do? The hatred, greed, and delusion that breed wars exist everywhere. In our minds, in our relationships, in our lives, where we do have the power to transform them. Children are thinking of peace when they fold paper cranes and children all over the world have been folding paper cranes, a memorial in Hiroshima filled with paper cranes that children all over the world have sent. We will soon be walking peacefully and singing together. These are ways of being in peace. Glenda mentioned children making origami cranes all over the world. Many of you may know the story behind that, a child named Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. For the next ten years, she led a healthy life and then at age 12 came down with the people in Hiroshima call the A-bomb disease. In Japanese folklore, they say that a crane lives a thousand years. If you fold a thousand origami paper cranes, you can overcome your illness. So Sadako and her friends started doing these cranes, but they actually took it a step further and they decided to dedicate each crane they made to world peace so that what happened to them will never happen to anyone else ever again. Sadako did die, but her legend lives on and one of the things that we, last year we had paper cranes that were origami cranes that were made for us by a woman from Hiroshima who was born four days after the bomb and she sent them to be part of this walk. My husband and I met her a few years ago when we were in Hiroshima and she was so moved to know that this small town in Vermont was doing this dedication to peace. She has dedicated her whole life to ending nuclear weapons and ending the possibility of war. And so this year we decided that we would try and get children to help make cranes. And so with the help of the after school programs at the TW Wood Gallery, the after school art programs, we asked children to make cranes. I was expecting them to make like a hundred cranes. Well I think we have a thousand cranes here. And I have some children here who are going to pass them out. Come on up honey. And they're going to just reach in the bag and pull out a crane and please take this crane with you. You can even take two cranes. There's a lot of them. Spread out guys. Theo, go over here honey. Theo, go over here. Start, yes, start with our floutist. And Junie, Junie goes straight ahead. Kathy, will you gesture to my granddaughter? There you go. How are you here? I'll let you stay there and over there. Find someone who doesn't have a crane. There you go. Over there. Okay. There we go. Please take more than one. I have so many. Sent cranes again this year. Her cranes are really almost I would say expertly made. Does anybody now have a crane? Okay. Good job guys. And so at the end of the walk when you leave, I'll give you one of Taka's cranes which are extraordinary. And now we are going to be instructed in walking meditation. Welcome to our remembrance, our commemoration of Hiroshima and welcome to mindful walking. We are honored and humbled to be standing on the land of the Abenaki people. For those of you new to this event, this is a silent walk. We turn off any devices. We walk as one body although we will be crossing probably six intersections, one of which is a fairly busy or major intersection, Baleyav and State Street. We'll walk down State Street and end at the high school, Montpelier High School in the playing field where we'll gather again in a circle. 7.15, the adjusted hour of when the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. Originally it was dropped at 8.15 in the morning in 1945. But at 7.15 we will be, hopefully, if the walk is well paced at the State House lawn. And there we'll form another circle. We will, the bells at Christ's Church will be invited 77 times once for every year since 1945. This is a time in coming back to oneself in Buddhism, it's called shamatha in Christianity. We might stop and offer a prayer to the universe. Prayer for peace in our hearts, peace in our families, peace in our communities, our nation and peace on this planet that we all call our home. So it can, or it can be a time if you have a meditation practice of just coming back to your breath. So when the last bell is sounded at Christ's Church, we'll resume our walk and Glenda and I will lead us all down State Street and eventually reaching Montpelier High School During the walk, Kenzan will invite the small bell, who's right here in the black robe, an inken, and for that bell we will not, we don't stop. We walk in such a way that we arrive in every moment. Although in truth we have a destination of the high school, we just, we're walking for walking's sake. So in every moment we are arriving, constantly in the process of arriving, in an essence we're walking to go nowhere. I found it interesting that the word mindfulness, or sati, which comes from the ancient language in the day of the Buddha, the scriptural language, the ancient language of Pali. It means, mindfulness means to remember. So that to me is very apropos as regarding this, our event tonight. We walk in such a way in each step that we deeply remember the horrific events of August 6th, 1945. Buddhism is very steeped in paradox. Along with the remembrance of the horror of that day in history, we also ground ourselves in the beauty of the present, the beautiful, however warm, the summer night surrounded by a sea of green, beautiful trees, and brotherhood and sisterhood. So we walk in such a way that as well as remembering and honoring the past, we touch the ever-fleeting present moment. And if we make walking meditation a habit, we can actually, we can actually change the future. It is possible by the way we live. It is a very important tool of peace, at least as taught by my teacher, the late Thich Nhat Hanh. And to conclude, in the words of Father Dan Berrigan, Jesuit priest, poet, fierce anti-nuclear activist, he said, to remember is to bring back together that which has been scattered, to make whole again. So we do this in the way we walk tonight. We bring our awareness to the soles of our feet. And we try to avoid any useless thinking. And we rest our mind on the beauty of the sun and the sky and the beautiful green all around us. And we walk in a way where we, with each step, we caress the earth beneath us, each and every step. We caress the earth under our feet. So I do hope that you enjoy your walk on this very memorable evening. And thank you all of you for coming out. It's extremely, extremely hot. You may notice that there is a filming going on. Orchimedia is filming parts of this ceremony and walk. You should just be aware. And now Mary and I will take the banner and be at the head of the walk. And you can follow behind us. To express my deep gratitude and respect and admiration by sending micro origami cranes for your devoted and thoughtful peace action. Remembering Hiroshima. It is a great pleasure and honor for me that my paper cranes will join your peace walk on August 6. With my origami cranes, I will feel as if I would be joining you in your peace walk as a participant from Hiroshima. I love folding origami, especially paper cranes, which represent our hope and prayer for world peace without nuclear weapons. We have realized the importance of learning from history and not to make the same mistakes. We have made a lot of mistakes, which have led to many wars. War is an absolute evil. We are all responsible for future generations. Lori, did you want to begin with the comments? Is that better? Yes, that's better. Hi, I'm Lori Beach. I'm from Plainfield, Vermont, United States of America, a country that grew up in Hiroshima. As we remember the suffering in Hiroshima, I hope that some of us will dedicate ourselves to eradicating all nuclear weapons so we can do that. And if we don't, we're all in great danger. Six times that either the United States or Russia began to prepare to launch nuclear weapons believing the other country had already done so or was preparing to do so. For those six times that I used, we were very lucky that we didn't have a worldwide nuclear war. So we continue to have the risk of nuclear war by accident. Can we keep being lucky? What we're doing is we're playing machine war with 15,000 nuclear warheads belonging to nine nations around the world. If we don't get rid of those 15,000 and keep going up, if we don't get rid of nuclear weapons, either by accident or on purpose, they will be used. We're all in great danger every day. But there is hope. There are things we can do. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons was signed and ratified by 66 countries. So it has become part of international law. And there are several states in this country and a lot of cities and towns that have passed resolutions urging our federal government to join this international treaty. So we can join. We can urge our own town. We can lobby at our state legislature. We can talk to our congressional representatives to move toward getting rid of these weapons. We're fortunate here in Vermont that Congressman Peter Welch is one of 13 representatives who signed the Elizabeth Holmes Northern of HR 2850 to abolish nuclear weapons and spend money, money, and staff on peaceful purposes. So there is interest in talking about action we can do. I'm going to be glad to see you after we have announced that we're doing about hours for peace. If anyone wants to talk about some actions we can take, I'd be glad to talk with you. The story about the future, we all make choices about the world. Almost swallow the mic, get it very close to your mouth, and it project. I have been watching the half moon all the time and just feeling like a lot of people are doing this right now, and that perhaps with that 100th monkey, this will be the time that things will move. And I just have faith and hope and continue to work for peace. Hello, my name is Walt Caskell. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. And I'll try a little harder. It's like voting harder, you know? Anyway, this is my first time here, and I'm honored and honored to be with you folks. I know a couple people nearby where I live in the St. Albans area, but I don't know. It seems like there isn't the thrust, at least, in the area where I am, towards peace. And I'd love to see it ramped up a little more. Like a lot of you, I'm troubled by some of the things that I see in the media, but I try to avoid mainstream media. And I appreciate the things that religion, particularly in the way of rituals and contemplation and support, can be for people in this world. And I hope it can continue to serve that purpose. Other than that, again, I'm happy to be here. And I wish you all the best. And I hope to be here next year when we have other family members. Good evening. I'm Ethan Park, and I've heard too much about where most we are in the United States, and what's been a war on our soil since the Civil War. So we've been here for 15 years. And yet, the fact that we're here tonight in Park is a mindfulness and awareness of wars throughout this enormous planet shows that we are all, or should be, one human community. The poet, Carl Sandberg, said that there's only one man in the world, and his name is all men. There's only one woman in the world, and her name is all women. And there's only one child in the world, and their name is all children. So it's for that in mind that I was thinking of our world community and how we're all affected. And there's not peace in the world. My name is Arnie Abramowitz. And I drive through Montpelia, and I see scientists say drive like your children live here. And I would say we should live like our children live here. And if we want that to have a future, we need to be very, very careful about nuclear war and climate change. I think the three signs we have here today, remembering Hiroshima, war is not the answer, and peace is the answer. Say it all, and if we could follow these signs, it'd be a much better place. I come because it's part of a family tradition. My wife's mother was devoted to peace. Her name is Crystal Holzer, and Crystal Ruthie here, if there was any chance, she passed on a long time ago. And she was very committed, very committed to working for peace. So when this day comes, it's a special day. She passed away. So it's very kind of a day of remembrance. And I'll sing a few songs for you in a few minutes, right? But I wanted also to apologize. I just recovered from rotator cuff surgery. So my arm is not as good, and that's one of the reasons I wasn't walking, because I can't carry things or move in certain ways. But I'm glad to be here with you and sing a few songs. My name is Joseph. I live in Marshfield. Trying to think what makes sense on a day like today. And one of the things that I think about is the threat to our democracy, that the continuing existence of nuclear weapons epitomizes. The people of the world have spoken. 122 nations have passed the international treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. None of the nuclear weapons states have joined that. The American people have shown time and again that they want to see the end of nuclear weapons and the end of the threat of nuclear war has not happened. We're told that today our democracy is under threat, because there are people who are trying to restrict our voting and we're trying to restrict our ability to speak out. And that is very true. But the threat to democracy goes back at least to 1945, when the American people did not vote for this bomb to exist and have made it very clear they don't want it to continue to exist, but it continues. So on a day like this, I just not only want to remember those who died 77 years ago in Murashima and Nagasaki and in so many other places around the world, but I want us to commit to bringing real democracy into this country and into this world. Because if we had that, these weapons would not exist. My name is Ken Zahn. And I'm grateful to be with you all this evening to hear your expressions of compassion and caring for the people and for this world. And I'm grateful to be with you to walk for peace, to chant for peace, to sing for peace within the world and within ourselves. My name is Mary. And in truth, I felt a little bit rushed back at the library. And I didn't follow up on some words from one of my favorite people, Daniel Berrigan, Father Daniel Berrigan. When he spoke about the meaning of the word remember, he said he another way he explained it, it's to make whole again. For me, it's about embracing paradox, which I spoke about at the library. And the particular practice Buddhism is full of teachings around paradox. And yes, there is so much suffering and horror in the world, but there is also every day we have the opportunity to cultivate joy and peace and happiness and boundless gratitude, boundless gratitude for what we have while we have it. And I'm known I can have tendency to be a little bit preachy. I think I have some puritan in my blood. But if I think if we want a culture of peace to counter the culture of death and destruction and war that we live in every day, we have to be very, very purposeful and grow our hearts in that direction if that's what we want to leave to our children. And in today's world, it can be a challenge to cultivate gratitude. But I learned the hard way. I have a child with severe disabilities. And I was determined that I did not want to become embittered in life. So I'm just speaking from what I know, but that is all that my teacher taught was building a culture of peace and suffering and the end of suffering. So I'll pass the, and I'm hoping I didn't sound too preachy. Thank you, Mary. I don't think you sounded too preachy. Is there anyone who has not spoken who would like a chance at the mic? Okay. We have. Yes. I'm very grateful for all of this. All of the people I just found out yesterday from my dear friend, Teresa Mejo and Peter. And I'm very grateful for them doing this and letting me know about it. Very good to be here. Thank you. Having heard our individual voices speaking up for peace, we will now join in, join our voices together in harmony. Even though we're not harmonizing, if you know a harmony, if you wanna harmonize, that's fine. But just having all these different voices singing together is harmony and harmony is peace. It's things coming together, things that are different coming together as one. So Rick will lead us in a few songs, hopefully you will know them or he will teach them and take it away, Rick. Well, I think I can hear you, right? Oh, you. Okay. So these are songs that you all know. And I spent a lot of time working with Pete Seeger and a lot of wonderful people that I learned songs from. Today I decided to wear a hat that was a gift from one of my mentors, you Utah Phillips. This is Utah's hat. So Utah is with us today in a way. And this is a song that I had the chance to actually meet this guy, Ed McCurdy. Ed McCurdy wrote this song years ago. And you know it. Last night I had the strangest dream I never dreamed before I dreamed the girl had all agreed to point and to bore. Sing it now. I dreamed I saw on my room it was filled with women and men and a paper signing said they'd never and when the years were all signed and a million copies were made they all joined hands and bowed their hands and read old prayers and snacks and the people in the streets below were dancing round and round and swords and guns and uniforms were scattered on the ground. Now let's sing it together. I want to hear you. I know we've got to move it. Just take one step. Maybe you need to feed us the words. Last night I had the strangest dream I never dreamed before I dreamed the girl had all agreed to point and to bore. I dreamed I saw on my room it was filled with women and men and a paper signing said they'd never and when the years were all signed and a million copies were made both from Germany and from here in the United States and we were singing at the Kennedy Center and we sang this song in two different languages at the same time we sang it in German I can't do this but because we had a bunch of German people we sang it in German and in English you know and after the show some of the veterans came in because it was Veterans Day everyone had been in the cemeteries remembering all the soldiers who died and they said this is such a wonderful moment for us to see both people from America and Germany up on a stage not fighting but singing together and it really kind of stuck with me that whole idea about war and you know when he wrote this song it was too short he said, well Rick, I wrote the song but I never sang it it was too short only had a few verses and a man named Joe Hickerson who was a young camp counselor at the time he later became head of the Library of Congress but at the time he was a young camp counselor and he wrote the other words to make the song into the circle and that's the song that we wrote today it's a little bit quieter but if you sing it together it'll sound great where have all the flowers gone long time I've seen where have all the flowers gone long time ago where have all the flowers gone young girls picked them long time long time long time young girls gone long time long time long time going to start going down and laying some flowers back after we all sing down by the riverside we can do that and then I will introduce Kenneson to say a little something and lead us in chanting and drumming alright, we're going to take a chance after actually outside we would like everyone to pick up a flower from this basket to the center and with your intention with your aspiration with your commitment to do something for peace and to send the flowers off down the river after Kenneson after Kenneson we've got to sing this one loud I'm taking a risk now I can't really go this high but for you guys I will move my arm up here I'm going to lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside down by the riverside down by the riverside I'm going to lay down riverside down by the riverside I'm going to sing riverside and salty water I'm going to walk with that Prince of Peace I'm going to study war I'm going to study war no more I'm going to study war no more I'm going to study war I'm going to study war no more I'm going to stop action what's good to create peace and that is our commitment and our dedication that we will send with these flowers down the river so we'll take a flower and then come back in the circle circle and Kinsan will tell us a little about chanting and drumming and do chanting and drumming. Teach us a chant to lead us down to the riverside. I think we have to lay it down. This is where the flowers have gone. This is where the flowers have gone. This is generally at such a level. So we had an opportunity to walk in silence and silence can be a way of coming to this present moment to coming to peace inside ourselves. And another way can be through chanting, through drumming, allowing our emotions to move and change with the chant to let them simply flow through without getting stuck. So this chant that we're going to do this evening within a specific order of Buddhism, Niponzan Miohoji, they do a lot of peace walks specifically for nuclear disarmament. And their practice is chanting this chant, Nam Yohoreng Gekyo, which is actually what's written on the drum also Nam Yohoreng Gekyo. And this means praise to the wonderful Dharma Lotus Sutra. And that's shorthand for praising the contents of the Lotus Sutra. And the contents, the main teaching of that is that we all have the wonderful potential to wake up, that we all have the potential to see clearly. And so we can chant with this wish for ourselves to see clearly and the world to see clearly. Clearly, if we saw clearly, there wouldn't be more. So the chant Nam Yohoreng Gekyo, I'll chant it and invite you all to chant in the response. And there's a specific rhythm to it, but the harmonics can be whatever you like. So you're welcome to let your voice flow freely. Nam Yohoreng Gekyo