Gardens of Inspiration

Chas Raws from The Friends Quarterly (a Quaker publication) describes the Royal Horticultural Society's annual show at Tatton Park featuring an award winning vision garden by Dori Miller and son Howard of a World Without Torture:

"Thousands of visitors took the time to walk through its high security fences, past the rubble of a bombed site with an ecological succession of plants, representing the recovery of land as a metaphor for the healing of human bodies and minds after torture.  They could pause to listen to the subdued voices of victims of torture before emerging into a garden of predominantly white flowers with a statue releasing a dove.  They took away with them leaflets and seed packets bearing the message of 360 years of Quakers sowing seeds of peace and reconciliation and 36 years of working for the abolition of torture." (the Quaker Abolition of Torture Group was established in 1979).

The Iroquois Tree of Peace representing the Six Nations of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy.  The Great Law of Peace inspired founding fathers of the United States and Canada.

Paul Rousselle of Peace Mala's Youth Group worked with Pam Evans, director of Peace Mala in Wales to mark the ten year anniversary of Peace Mala and its vision of global religious unity through youth.  Representatives of different faiths were invited who had worked together on the Peace Mala Gower Pilgrimage for World Peace (the historical sacred sites of Gower).  The Tree of Peace ceremony took place within a prepared Circle in Coed Bwlardd, near the Black Mountains and Carreg Cenin Castle of Carmarthenshire.  A local oak sapling was donated and dedicated to be planted in the center of the circle.  

Valentine Peace tulip bulbs were planted around the tree.  Representatives from local Peace Mala schools participated along with spiritual representatives of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Celtic earth religions to give distinct blessings.  This profound ceremony is described here with details of weapons buried, pebbles representing acts of personal reconciliation, as well as messages of peace on scrolls placed in a Willow arch.  Also stated there are the meanings of each of the elements and tools of the ceremony.  

"What took place had to be one of the most profoundly beautiful and deeply spiritual ceremonies involving people of different faiths ever witnessed. We all felt that we had experienced a miracle."

The essence of this time of prophecy is that we are living in a time of crossroads; a time of shifting world age cycles where the old world and its separation-based mentality is in the process of dying and transforming into a new world that lives and creates through our hearts.

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Dear St Valentine, your martyrdom resounds through the centuries, An impassioned heart Guilty only of love . . We celebrate your gift, however vaguely remembered, By romantics and poets, Your love essence remains.  Yet we only know it now as a dress rehearsal, For our sentient nature, Clothed in superficial colours of glamour and illusion.  

But a higher love beckons, One we will yet experience, On all planes consciously, The magnet of the heart, Will bless the sacred union.  (VPP poem submission, Sophia La Toa, New Zealand)