Tag Archives: peace

The Silence of No-One’s Land by Alex Joyner

Photo of the blue ridge mountains
 

‘The silence gathered and struck me. It bashed me broadside from nowhere, as if I’d been hit by a plank. It dropped from the heavens above me like yard goods; ten acres of fallen, invisible sky choked the field. . . . But the silent fields were the real world’ —Annie Dillard, “A Field of Silence”   I was born in a forest in the foothills of Virginia. My birth certificate notes a hospital as my place of birth, but we know how trivial that is. Birth for me was waiting in the trees. Through … Continue reading The Silence of No-One’s Land by Alex Joyner

Wrestling With Peace by Mary Alice Hostetter

Rainbow colored peace symbol
 

I remember that day in sixth grade at Gap Elementary School with painful clarity. Mrs. Groff turned from the board where she had written in her careful cursive the names of the countries involved in The War—seemed pretty much the whole world—and she asked, “How many of your fathers fought in the war?” She might as well have asked, “And how many of your fathers stayed home and milked cows while brave men went off to foreign lands to fight for freedom?” That’s how I heard her question, and I wanted to disappear. It was … Continue reading Wrestling With Peace by Mary Alice Hostetter

A Place to Take Stock


 

  Every year, my husband and I spend two weeks at a 70-year-old cabin in the Allegheny Mountains, west of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. I have been going there since the summer after I graduated from college, when the cabin had no electricity, plumbing or running water. But 100 feet off our back porch was the constant, comforting sound of the Maury River flowing through the mountain pass where the cabin was built—a sound that more than made up for the lack of 20th-century conveniences. Now, 40 years later, the cabin still has no … Continue reading A Place to Take Stock

Mentors of the Peace


 

By Kanta Bosniak “Herein lies the real hope for our future. We are moving toward the ultimate destiny of our species—a state of compassion and love.” – Jane Goodall “Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.” –Nikola Tesla “We use our gifts to bring people together.”–Babtaunde Olatunji Over a period of twelve years, I painted a series of sixty Contemporary Folk Art portraits that I use as teaching tools and which I exhibit in universities and other educational settings. The Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech is … Continue reading Mentors of the Peace