Golden Gate Bridge seen from just below the Monument (Author Photo)
“We are grateful . . . for the infinite gifts of heaven and earth,” reads the inscription. It acknowledges “the true fundamental of the human soul that pursues the truth, implements the good, creates beauty and renews his will to step forward.”
The monument, installed in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1984, references the artist’s Buddhist path, or “way.”
“Great Nature” by Bundo Shunkai (Author photo)
“This way,” it explains, “brings about peace in mind and on earth by mutual understanding, encouragement and help . .” The carved stone replicates Japanese calligrapher and Buddhist priest Bundo Shunkai (1878–1970)’s “Great Nature.”
Its adjacent explanatory stone proclaims that it is “in recognition of the continued quest for world peace by all people.”
There it was, peace on earth: Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Mormons, Catholics, Buddhists, Brahma Kumaris and assorted others hanging out together around bountiful breakfast tables and offering prayers in every known faith tradition. . . beginning with an Ohlone Prayer in the Four Directions because “we acknowledge we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone . . .”
OK, it’s San Francisco.
But in addition to all that doom loop stuff you’ve been reading about, in the City of St Francis there is a powerful interfaith community that works and shares and agitates for good even when it’s not being called upon to fight a specific instance of antisemitism or racial violence or Palestinian hate (or homelessness.) The several hundred gathered for this purely celebratory event were members and supporters of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, now in its 35th year.
The 23rd Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast happened in the early morning of Tuesday the 21st, and for those few hours there was peace. And a lot of joy, some hearty group singing, minimal politicking (in San Francisco, politics manage to sneak in everywhere) and a closing song with accompanying harp.
In the beginning: after that acknowledgment was read, local Ohlone Andrew Galvin (whose day job is curator of Old Mission Dolores) explained he was not of the Ramaytush Language — Ohlone tribes of old identified with the separate languages they spoke — but it mattered not. Galvin helped us express gratitude to the grandfather spirits of North, South, East and West — plus Earth and Sky. How can you miss?
Prayers for the meal (“saying grace,” in olden-days terms) were offered by Islamic School teacher Kashif Abdullah, Methodist pastor Staci Current and Rabbi Amanda Russell.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (Author photo)
Politics only mildly intervened, with Nancy Pelosi — referred to among this gathering as ‘Speaker,’ and don’t bother with the ‘Emerita’ — quoting a little scripture and a little St Francis. Plus, the Mayor spoke, because that’s what mayors do.
But about that closing song — “Blessings Upon Blessings ” — a solo/sing-along which has been traditional for this occasion since long pre-pandemic. The singer was my Brahma Kumaris friend Sr Elizabeth, whom you might have seen onstage as Snow White in Beach Blanket Babylon a few decades back. She has the voice of an angel, even when not accompanied by a fellow Brahma Kumari harpist.
The author with Brahma Kumaris friends Sr Sukanya and Sr Elizabeth
I could be a Brahma Kumari — if I could sit still long enough. They believe in stillness and meditation and peace, plus, they have women leaders. As a finale to this event Sr Elizabeth’s traditional send-off captured the spirit of the occasion:
“Blessings Upon Blessings” is about being friends, understanding one another, living in peace, all those quaint notions that appear from time to time as possibilities. This was just one time to celebrate possibilities, among a multitude of good folks from a multitude of faiths.
I’m thankful for the celebration, and the multitudes.
Some of the things in short supply these days: optimism, compassion, comfort and joy and the conviction that light will always overcomes darkness.
Dave Len Scott Photo by Nicholas Wilson-nwilsonphoto.com
Two San Francisco-based musicians are quietly at work to advance all of the above. Dave Len Scott and Vernon Bush lead multi-pronged lives that are exhausting to consider, but they offer a strong endorsement of the energy that derives from choosing this particular line of work.
Occasionally the two get together to reinforce the notion that faith, hope and love continue to win out.
Scott, who teaches at Sonoma State University, is a trumpet player, pianist, composer, conductor and dispenser of peace and joy. His bio explains that he is “equally comfortable in improvisational/jazz and ensemble/classical idioms.” Bush, noted for his “Inspire Choirs” that are premised on the African proverb, If you can speak you can sing, is a singer, composer and performer who works closely with San Francisco’s historic Glide Memorial Church. He is also co-founder, with Marybeth Tereszkiewicz, of Tree of Life Cross-Cultural Arts Camp, a yearly two to three week summer program for children in the small school communities of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Both Scott and Bush make a respectable living through their art, but what they do essentially for free, for the benefit of their brothers and sisters on the planet, sets them apart from many (happily by no means all!) of their fellow musical professionals.
The two get together occasionally (and will do so regularly throughout the spring of 2016) for “Live at Five” evening services at another San Francisco church, of which this writer is fortunate to be a member. Scott advertises the musical segments of the events thus: “Vernon Bush is a gentle soul and a gifted choir leader. To shine positivity and love is just Vernon’s way. Anyone who comes to sing with Vernon (first Monday of every month, 7 pm) at Calvary will come away feeling better about everything, feeling loved! I am certain!”
Certainty of goodness (and feeling loved) might be added to the things in short supply today. But a recent “Live at Five” service led, musically, by Scott and Bush, featured a chorus-with-drums rendition of this Chinese proverb:
Where there is light in the soul
There is beauty in the person
Where there is beauty in the person
There is harmony in the home
Where there is harmony in the home
There is honor in the nation
Where there is honor in the nation
There is peace in the world.
Vernon Bush
It may be an unfortunate fact that there is not a lot of peace in the world. But thankfully there are people like Dave Len Scott and Vernon Bush out there bringing light to the soul.
In case you missed it, the International Day of Peace was celebrated recently. Its official date was September 21, and the word is there were “festivals, concerts, a global Peace Wave with moments of silence at noon in every time zone, and much more.” But I think the word wasn’t spoken very loudly.
In 1981, when Peace Day was unanimously and officially established by the United Nations, there were plenty of signs it might not easily gain traction. Ronald Reagan was inaugurated — which brought us that “peace through strength” business, demonstrated by bombing Libya and selling arms to Iran for the Contras. President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in Egypt and a few months later Israel annexed the Golan Heights. It’s been pretty much downhill ever since.
Still, Peace Day ought to have its day. In areas where it does get celebrated there’s a lot of dancing in the streets, lighting of candles in windows and — most peaceful of all if you ask me — moments of silence. It’s hard to commit violence when you’re keeping quiet. Or, for that matter, if you’re dancing in the streets instead of blowing up things.
I think we shouldn’t give up on Peace Day. We now have the word from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani saying he has some interest in peace, and our President Obama saying the U.S. would like peace, and maybe Iranian-American relations would be a good place to start. Mr. Obama admitted right off that Peace Day wasn’t always historically possible. “The idea that nations and peoples could come together in peace to solve their disputes and advance a common prosperity seemed unimaginable” before the U.N. came into being, were his exact words.
In his address to the U.N. (quoted above) Mr. Obama zipped through an extensive list of warlike actions and circumstances in which the U.S. as well as just about every other country on earth has hardly seemed bent on achieving peace of any sort. But I do like his closing paragraph:
“I know what side of history I want to the United States of America to be on,” our president said. Essentially, the side that maintains freedom and equality for all. “That is why we look to the future not with fear, but with hope. And that’s why we remain convinced that this community of nations can deliver a more peaceful, prosperous and just world to the next generation.”
So let’s hear it for Peace Day. Even if it’s not yet quite gotten its day.
Perhaps the pilgrims and the Indians did indeed sit down to a great feast and a peace pipe; there were probably plenty of wild turkeys around in the early days of the pre-U.S. But all of those things had nothing to do with the beginnings of Thanksgiving Day — you knew that, of course.
Nope. It was Abraham Lincoln’s effort to bring a little peace into the fractured country he found himself trying to lead, at a time about as fractured here as the world is, today, everywhere. Abe thought a little reverence and repentance would be a good thing. Here, in part, is what he had to say:
“But we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace…”
Poor Abe. If he thought he knew deceitfulness and intoxication, he should have seen what’s going on in health reform. And if he looked beyond our shores he might have sensed wider “punishment and chastisements in this world” and called for a global pause.
Whatever its origin — Lincoln’s formal establishment of the day was in 1863, but what would preschool be without pilgrims and cornucopias? — Thanksgiving Day still offers a nice time to pause.
Here in San Francisco a few hundred or so of us will be doing that at the 5th Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, where we’ll have a group Ommmm, a Muslim call to prayer, a bunch of other prayers to Whomever has not given up on us all, “with one heart and one voice” as Mr. Lincoln suggested we do. Then we’ll go home and eat stuffed turkey and watch ball games.
