Peace Week 2013

2/11/2013

Peace Week 2013, Building Bridges: Peace Through Understanding, featured guest presenters Jeffrey Toobin, Teri McLuhan and Patricia McCormick. The week also presented students with opportunities to meet human rights advocates and create music, drama, and visual arts projects.

Peace Week 2013

Peace Week 2013 invited the Friends Seminary community to consider the message of peace drawn from Chapter 11 of Isaiah: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a child shall lead them.” Like the Quaker self-taught painter Edward Hicks, whose meditations on these verses inspired a series of paintings over three decades, the Friends community spent time musing over what it meant to come together in peace and the role that understanding those who hold diverse perspectives plays in creating a truly peaceable kingdom.

The intense gazes of the wild beasts in the painting Peaceable Kingdom seem an anathema to peace, and yet surrounded by this menagerie of animals, the determined child guides the lion with a firm grasp on his mane. Peaceable Kingdom and its many renditions--which include a background vignette depicting William Penn's treaty with the Lenape Indians--serve as a metaphor for humankind’s ability to live in harmony. During Peace Week 2013, the Friends Seminary community examind the role of nonviolent communication as a means by which the gap, created by differences that often divide and separate us, is bridged. When we open ourselves to the perspectives of others and see the light of God in everyone, we can gain new understandings and find opportunities for shared resolutions.

Highlights from Peace Week 2013

Monday, February 4

Opening Peace Week Meeting for Worship | Middle School 8:15 AM, Upper School 9:05 AM

Peace Testimony Queries from Faith and Practice

Tuesday, February 5

MS Meeting For Worship | 8:15 AM

7th and 8th Grade Winds and Strings perform "Dona Nobis Pacem."

Wednesday, February 6

Lower School Meeting for Worship | 8:40 AM

Query: What does peace sound like?

US & MS Assembly| 8th Period in the Meetinghouse

Patricia McCormick, a former journalist, novelist and two-time National Book Award Finalist was the guest speaker during the Middle and Upper School’s Peace Week assembly on Wednesday, February 6. Patricia, a former Friends parent, is author of the National Book Award finalist, Never Fall Down. Patricia talked about her experience researching and writing her new book--a story based on the true story of an 11-year-old boy who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia by playing music for the Khmer Rouge. Her discussion touched on the role narrative story can play in educating and engaging others in topics relating to human rights, social justice and the promotion of peace. Patricia was joined by Thenjiwe McHarris from Amnesty International and Emma Daly from The Human Rights Watch.

Following the assembly, students, faculty and staff joined our guests from Amnesty International and The Human Rights Watch in the cafeteria for some refreshments and continued discussion. Included in this after school session was an opportunity for students to learn about three current human rights campaigns and participate in an advocacy service project sponsored by the Amnesty Club at Friends.

Thursday, February 7

MS Meeting For Worship | 8:15 AM

Fifth Grade Musical Selections: “Let There Peace on Earth” and “Let it Be.”

LS Library Open House | 8:30-9 in the Library

Lower School parents joined LS Librarian, Kelly Grimmett and Friends Seminary Service Learning Director, Leitzel Schoen for refreshments and a chance to check out selected books to be used for a family discussion about peace and nonviolent communication. Each book on display has a Peace Query that kindergarten and first grade classes have developed.

LS Assembly | 8th Period in the Meetinghouse

In the Lower School Peace Week Assembly, Third Graders presented a play, "The Dance of Elegba", a story from Nigeria and Cuba, adapted from The Cow of No Color by Bryan Hogan.

The US Chorus performed a song entitled "Can You Hear" by James Papoulis from “Sounds of a Better World: Small Voices Calling,” a series of songs focusing on children, their world and how small steps can be made to improve it. Lower School students will also learned the melody in their music classes so they could join in during the LS Peace Week Assembly to communicate how we must listen to others and hear their cries, and not turn our backs to issues of peace and hardship around the world.

Evening Program for Peace Week | 6:30-8:30 PM in the Meetinghouse

Award-winning filmmaker, Teri McLuhan, screened her documentary, Frontier Ghandi. The film, 21 years in the making, tells the epic story of Badshah Khan who raised a 100,000 strong nonviolent army of Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Parsee, Sikh, and Buddhist men, women, and young people that came together in the cause of peace, social justice, religious tolerance, and human dignity for all during the resistance movement against British colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century. Following the screening, Teri will talk about her experience as a filmmaker documenting this compelling story. As a documentarian, she was drawn to this story of nonviolent resistance and feels today’s social activists have much to learn from Badshah Khan and the Red Shirts. Frontier Gandhi won The Black Pearl Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Friday, February 8

US Assembly | 8:15 AM in the Meetinghouse

Visiting Scholar Jeffrey Toobin spoke about the 2nd Ammendment. Parents are invited.

All-School Meeting for Worship | 9 AM in the Meetinghouse

Other Peace Week Events

Pañuelos Por La Paz – Embroideries for Peace in the Gallery

The Rosenquist Gallery featured Eric Quinones’s Upper School Spanish III students’ service learning project. Pañuelos Por La Paz: Embroideries for Peace is an international memory project. Amateur as well as professional textile artists throughout Mexico have launched Bordando Por la Paz, as a way to document the staggering loss of life brought on by the drug wars. This initiative has now been joined by groups in more than 60 cities world-wide. Friends Spanish III classes are honored to join Pañuelos Por La Paz and contribute their embroideries as a way to keep memory alive. A representative of the New York group, Dr. Marithelma Costa, of Hunter College, will join students on the first day of Peace Week. This is a great example of how art can serve as a form of nonviolent communication. Friends art teacher, Daphne Taylor, will be assisting in this interdisciplinary initiative.

“We wish to recover the memory of those dead or missing during the last decade. For every victim, an embroidered handkerchief.” - Círculos de Estudio Bordando por La Paz

Library Book Selection- Peace Stories From Around the World

LS Librarian, Kelly Grimmett, Friends Seminary Service Learning Director, Leitzel Schoen, and kindergarten and first grade students have created, through Google Maps, an online resource charting peace stories from around the world. This map can help families select children’s books that could be used as read-alouds and prompts for at-home discussions about peace. During Peace Week, families are invited to visit the library and check out these book selections. The lower school classes that read these stories during Library time developed peace queries for families to consider when thinking about peace and nonviolent communication. Click on each marker on the Google Map to learn about the plot, access online resources, and receive a peace query to guide a family in reflection.

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