Silent Peace Walks have their origin with the beginning of life.  Throughout time, people and creatures have experienced consciously choosing to walk with each other in silence for camaraderie, love, harmony, empowerment, creativity and peace.

 

Some years ago, Stephen Fulder felt called to create Silent Peace Walks for Israelis and Palestinians to experience being peaceful together by walking together.  These walks had a powerful healing and restorative impact on participants.

 

In 2011, Stephen talked to Jack Kornfield, and they decided to initiate a Silent Peace Walk in New York City.  Gal Romano became the organizer for the walk.  Over 600 people showed up on a cold, rainy October day to the New York Academy of Medicine.  A group of faith-based leaders from diverse religions and spiritual paths had volunteered to show up as stewards for the walk.  These leaders were Stephen Fulder, Jack Kornfield, Jessica Dibb, Rabbi David Ingber, Jonathan Granoff, Bob Chase, Zia Inayat-Khan, Shabda Kahn, Khadija Julia Goforth and others.

 

When we gathered we listened to guidelines for the walk, and prayers from many faith traditions, and then began a Silent Peace Walk in single file up the East Side of Central Park, across the north end, then down the West Side, and entered the Park at 86th St.  The police were so moved they allowed us in the park, even though we did not have a permit.  There, a huge circle was formed, holding hands, and people experienced the culmination of the transformation that occurred in each one of us. As we sat in circles of ten afterward to share our experiences, person after person expressed that it was the most visceral and real experience they’d ever had of what it felt to be peaceful with others.  The following year in November, Jessica Dibb invited a group of people to do a smaller peace walk in Manhattan beginning at the New York Insight Meditation Center.  We walked down 6th Avenue, across 23rd Street, and walked into to Madison Park.  Again, in the small circles people shared that this was a profound experience of real and visceral peace with others.

 

Being inspired by the two walks, Jessica envisioned a Silent Peace Walks movement.  She shared this vision with Jack Kornfield and Stephen Fulder who affirmed their support.

 

Silent Peace Walks would be a nondenominational and secular way for people around the globe to walk together and learn to be peaceful with one another.  People would attend without bringing attention to the particular causes they believed in.  Everyone would be invited to participate with a willingness to be inspired to bring peace into what they cared about, to experience walking with others who may or may not share their beliefs, and to learn how to peacefully coexist.

 

A simple set of principles and actions would be created so that anyone around the globe could have Silent Peace Walks in unity with, and representative of, the central unified vision.

 

A year of Silent Peace Walks would begin with a walk in Baltimore, a city of great potential and challenges, with both great poverty and affluence.  This initial walk would be followed by  Silent Peace Walks every day of the year somewhere in the world by a person or group who had committed to the walk on that particular day.  These walks would be videotaped for at least two minutes and would be archived on a central website for the inspiration of all.

 

We would create materials to guide anyone in holding Silent Peace Walks from their own home, neighborhood, etc.  For example, one could host a Friday night dinner with friends, followed by a Silent Peace Walk around the block with dinner guests.

 

On December 18, 2015, a Silent Peace Walk of about 75 people took place in Baltimore, Maryland to plant a seed for the launch of the movement in Baltimore at a future date.

 

Currently, Silent Peace Walks Organizing Committee is meeting on a regular basis to work together to launch the movement on the first International Silent Peace Walks Day: May 7, 2017.

 

364 other walks will happen in the ensuing days.  We hope that this movement will flower exponentially and that there will be multiple walks a day throughout the globe until humanity has learned to function, create and coexist in peace, creating a life in which all can be fed, sheltered, educated, so that all can thrive and give their gifts to the world.