 land. I would also like to say that we have masks. If there's anyone here who would like a mask, who does not have one, please step up and Therese will give you a mask and please stand where you feel comfortable. If you want to keep distance, then keep distance and if you feel comfortable and if you're fully vaccinated, we'd love, especially when we get to our circle, up at the high school to have a sense of cohesiveness. This day is in memory of a day 76 years ago when our country dropped the first atomic bomb on a city killing a hundred and forty thousand people at one instant. There were some survivors. There was a young girl who was two years old when the bomb was dropped, Sadako Sasaki and she seemed to be growing up to be a healthy young woman. She was a good runner and she was looking forward to becoming a phys ed teacher. But when she was 12 years old, she got a cold. Her skin started breaking out with lesions and she came down with what was known as the atomic bomb disease, leukemia. She was finally hospitalized and while she was in the hospital, she was told the the myth, the story of the thousand cranes. I can't talk any louder. I'm sorry. Come up closer. The legend was if you fold a thousand paper cranes that you will get your wish. And some versions say she did fold a thousand and other versions say she didn't quite get there. But in any event, children ever since have been folding paper cranes and leaving them at the Children's Memorial in Hiroshima. We have some very special paper cranes here tonight that were made for us for this peace walk from a friend I have to say a friend in Hiroshima and to reach and tell you the story of our paper cranes. I invite all of you to come up and take an origami peace screen from this basket to carry with you on this walk. Peter, you can start just to demonstrate. These cranes were made by Takako Shimizu, a resident of Hiroshima who was born four days after the bombing. My husband Peter and I met Taka in March of 2019 when we visited Hiroshima and Taka served as our guide. Taka's family, especially her husband Ken's family, was greatly affected by the bombing with death, illness, miscarriages, and in some case lifelong suffering. Every day of Taka's life is a day for her to work for world peace so that what happened to her city and her people will never happen to anyone else ever again. She was so moved by a video of last year's peace walk that she sent Buddhist Peace Action Vermont these exquisite origami peace cranes for this year's walk. She explained, Peter, can you hold that up for a second? She explained that these are double cranes joined together. Can you pull it out? Thank you. Joined together at the center wing. They are a symbol of joining hands, a symbol of togetherness for peace. Taka would like each participant to take a crane home with them today as a way for her to join hands with each one of us in friendship and in our work for peace. I will be carrying her string of 1000 cranes, which actually didn't she didn't quite get to 1000 because she wanted to get it in the mail. But she wanted it to get to me so that we could make it for this evening, for this evening's walk. And Taka says to us, it is a great pleasure and honor for me to join you, join your respectful and meaningful peace event in the form of these origami cranes. Welcome to our commemoration. It's really very heartwarming to see so many people that have come out for our walk. I too, as Glenda spoke of earlier, I'm humbled to be walking on the land of our land ancestors, the Abenaki people. This is a silent walk, except for a ballot the front and a ballot the rear. Neville and Glenda will sound their bells in kind of a call and response fashion. Also at 715 at the exact hour that the bomb was dropped, adjusted to Eastern standard time. The bells at Christ Church will toll 76 times. And at that time, unless we're in the middle of an intersection, we will stop and offer a prayer for peace. Or if we're meditators, we may come back to our breath. We will follow the route from main to State Street, walking down State Street crossing. It can be a busy intersection at Bailey Ave with this number of people will likely will cross in several groups, but obviously feel free to pick your pace up in the middle of the intersection. Walking meditation outdoors is slow. But for safety purposes, adjust your pace and then we'll proceed to the playing fields by Montpelier High School, where right where we'll form another circle to share reflections and song, poetry, music. Mariko and I will lead the walk. And I would ask that you begin by becoming aware of your body in the standing position, particularly your feet as they contact the earth. You might feel the universal pull of gravity drawing us down into the womb of the earth. You may also feel the stability and the solidity from the earth and allow it to permeate every cell of your body. The earth will give us a lot of energy when we walk in a way of awareness. We're not walking to chase after anything. We have no deadlines to meet. There's no rush. We're not encumbered in any way. We're walking just to walk. If it gets a little boring and your attention wanders very gently, take your attention back to your steps and walking in this way as a free person, we regain sovereignty in our lives. We're walking in freedom. We're not chasing after anything. This is meditation in motion. So I like to think that peace is possible. And I think as individuals, it is incumbent upon us to bring peace into our bodies, peace into our minds. And in that way, we can offer peace to the collective. We are not in peace with ourselves. We have nothing to offer the world. I think we all desperately want peace in the world. In our nation, in our communities, in our homes. And this is how we start. We come back to ourselves, our bodies and our minds. So I hope very, very much that you enjoy the walk. And there is, I think it was AJ musty, who said there is no way to peace. Peace is the way. And this is clearly the practice of peace. It's not something to talk about. It's something to bring into our life. So with that said, I hope very much that you enjoy the walk. This is a statement from Taka that she sent to be shared at this event. We have realized the importance of understanding 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. As your slogan says, peace is the answer. War is not the answer. We are all responsible for future generations. It was nice to see dogs walking for peace. Probably most of you don't remember President Franklin Roosevelt. He had a dog, a little terrier named Fala. And before we entered World War Two, he made a speech, including saying, I hate war. Eleanor, his wife, Eleanor hates war. Even my little dog Fala hates war. And yet, we go to war again, and again, and again. But nobody wants to go to war. You know, you would go on the street and ask anybody, do you want to go to war? No, ask any child. Do you want to go to war? So we are here to think about peace and to share our thoughts and to rededicate ourselves to promoting peace and to being peace. So the floor is open to anyone who wants to share thoughts. And after we shared our thoughts, our wonderful musician Rick Paleri, who played the Native American flute as we were gathering, will lead us in a few peace songs. And he will also lead us with his flute down to the river to send off flowers with our intentions for peace. I stood that perhaps we sent if we if we wish to send a message to Taka and to Ken, who will see a video of this event, Ken is her husband, and shares our thoughts for peace with them. And I just wanted to say to Taka the incredible gratitude I feel to her and to Ken and to their families for keeping love in their hearts and not anger and not bitterness, which would have been very understandable. But they have lived their lives for love and for peace. And I feel great gratitude. Peacemakers are very sincere, the task ahead of us. And this this is definitely a part it's endemic in Buddhist practice, but on the one hand, it is our responsibility to commemorate in this case, the horrors of nuclear war on a civilian population on a massive scale of loss of life, many cancers. Today, we live with so much racialized violence and inequity, our country is a lot of strife, just the violence that seems everywhere. But on the other hand, it's not enough to remember the horrors born to peacemakers in a very genuine sense. We have to appreciate and wake up to the beauty in life, the fragility, the impermanence, life, human life is very, very short. We're long overdue as a people and as individuals to wake up. And every year that I participate in this walk, I just feel a little more awake, beautiful sunset, people enjoying a night out, you know, with a pizza or beer, whatever people are doing. Just I really I feel so much gratitude for this life. So I think we have to hold both of these dualities, these incongruent aspects of life desperately needs our peacemaking. I thank you for this guy at about 715 of a jet going overhead. In the stories I read as a small child, after the fact, because I'm not that old. I missed all the World War Two. I missed Vietnam. But there were people in Hiroshima who looked up at the B 29 is going overhead and say, isn't that beautiful? Because it's this white thing in the sky. And they just brought it. They made it more real. I'd read the books. I'd seen the film. But that was like, Oh, that's what it was like 76 years ago. In Hiroshima, a single B 29 flying over. It's made me want peace more. I want to try and meet people who don't think like I do and talk to them. There's something going on the radio now about meeting up with someone who has different views than you for the recorded voice. Very scared. But I'm going to try to do that. And hopefully that can start to change the momentum of the world. One voice at a time. Thank you. In the still center of my being in the silence of the road spirit called me to say that I'm feeling a little shaky about it. Because it's so important to us as we try to imagine a world where the languages and the ways of other people that are cultures are nearly as extinct as the animals and insects that were worried about losing during the planet's death that's going on. We need to have our people learn even in elementary school, the cultures, religions, languages that are being lost among the people that are being genocidally or displaced from those cultures. And only when we can affirm every of the lost languages, the lost tribes, the lost ways, the lost religions and have that be what we're most interested so that they either fear us or we hope respect us. My father is a US military serviceman. My mother's Okinawan Japanese. It hasn't been until I want to say the last few years that I've truly felt in my body, the conflict that is the history of both of my parents ancestry. And it's groups like this that are coming together in community to make change to talk about it, to to bring it forward so that the legacy and the history isn't lost. And I look around the circle and I wonder where our children are because these are really important things that have happened. And in order to not repeat the things that have happened, like the atrocities, just the sheer horror of what has happened, we need to make sure that these things get passed. So thank you all for being here. Thank you for inviting me to be here. This is so tremendously meaningful, healing for all like all the generations back and for me too. So thank you for being here. And gratitude. Say it isn't true. Everything of our children say it is true. The streets and the buildings, the people and their lives, the jobs they do for a living. Say it isn't true. And when you think all the people in the cities of the world, you could vanish. Say it isn't true. Say it isn't true that there always has been and always will be more. Say it isn't true that there always has been and always will be more. Say it isn't true. I'm alive in a city, a country of the world. And I want to go on living. I want to see my life unfold. You know, it's hard to go on looking at the stories of our day and the dangers we're all facing, going worse in every way. And you would think with all of the genius and the brilliance of these times, we might find a higher purpose and a better use of mind. Say it isn't true. It has been all the fine things so it isn't true. I did up a story that my friend, Joseph Gerson told me last week when we were talking. Joseph is the author of a book called with Hiroshima eyes and he has spent many, many years working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. And the story he told me was about Joseph Rothblatt, who was a scientist in the Manhattan Project. One of the very few scientists who walked away from the Manhattan Project when he realized what the intentions for the use of the bomb were going to be. In 1955, Rothblatt, who spent the rest of his life working against nuclear weapons, pulled together scientists, philosophers, educators from around the world, where they all signed a statement to the governments of the world calling on them to abolish nuclear weapons, to ban the bomb as it is called in the 50s. Albert Einstein was one of the signers of that document. It was the last document he signed before he died that year. And Joseph said that the document was long and it called on the nations of the world to abolish nuclear weapons. But the message was very simple. In fact, it was the same message that the Hibakusha, the survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific, the Hibakusha, the same message that the Hibakusha had. It's a very simple message summed up very easily. Remember your humanity, forget the rest. I know, can everybody hear from way over there? We'll get the lyrics. Well, it's really an honor to be here with everyone today. And a special honor indeed. Because my wife, Mariana, came along. Her mother, Crystal Holzer, spent most of her life working for peace. And she would have been here. And she not passed away 13 years ago. I'm just very excited. And so I thought that we can see what the lyrics that they have are. Last night, I had a strange dream. I never dream or pray. And the bees below were dancing round and round. And guards and guards and uniform were sad. Last night, I had the strangest dream. This is a song that you all know. Now, I learned a lot of the music that I play from working with folk singer Pete Seeger for many, many years. And it was this was one of the first songs that I played with Pete. And I want you to sing it out loud. Okay, so that I can hear you from the other side. Okay, I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield that Prince. This little holzer asked me to write for peace rally. She said, she goes, Rick, I want you to write this song. And I don't need no Nambi Pambi song. I want one that's gonna get everybody singing. If you met Crystal, you know what I'm talking about. And so I, you know, when I wrote this song, I had some I had a lot to learn. Because this this song has changed a bit in in the in the year since I wrote it because it needed to be updated. Because things changed a lot. And so I'm going to go like this. It's up to you to carry on lift your voice and sing along. One day Lord will all be gone. It's up to you to carry on. But you know, I said, it's not up to you. It's up to us. So I thought that was the first major change. And then there's other changes I made. But let's try that. It's up to us to carry on lift your voice. Don't hesitate. If you're old, it's not too late to us to carry on.