Silence tells story of hopes for peace

RALEIGH -- Despite acorns pelting her and angry ants pinching her bare legs and feet, Rebekah Crisp, 41, stayed focused on her objective -- to meditate silently for 30 minutes.

She sat beneath an oak tree at Moore Square in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, eyes pressed shut, a relaxed smile on her lips. She was surrounded by nearly 450 other meditators who hoped that by observing peace within themselves, they could bring the same to others across the world.

"If we do nothing else today, if we just simply open our hearts, we will have achieved a great thing," said Neusom Holmes, minister of Unity Church of the Triangle, which helped organize the gathering.

The event, called "Peace in the Park," drew people from a variety of backgrounds and religious affiliations. Many subscribe to a concept that calls for 1 percent of a population to pray or meditate together, bringing a peaceful energy that they believe can reduce violence and crime, said Derrick "Sheffield" Pulley, an organizer with One %, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh.

People were encouraged to meditate in whatever fashion they chose, for whatever cause that called them.

"The whole point is to not have a focus, but to come at it with an openness of spirit," Pulley said.

With their eyes closed, the gatherers sat still. Amid the silence, other sounds seemed amplified. Birds sang. The wind rustled a plastic bag.

Crisp said that during the silence, she chanted a Sanskrit mantra in her mind, wishing peace and happiness for others. Crisp said she can't personally feed hungry children or comfort the victims of land mines.

"Sometimes, I feel like this is all I can do," she said, still sitting cross-legged in "lotus position" after the meditation was over.

Being quiet together, en masse, seems to make a bigger impact than an individual meditating alone at home, said Mark Accomando of the Center for Conscious Living in Raleigh. He likened the idea to charcoal in a grill.

You can heat one coal, "but it's not going to cook your dinner," he said.

John Davies, a senior associate at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, spoke to participants shortly before the meditation began. He said he started researching the effects of collective meditation in the 1980s in Lebanon. It was during the country's civil war that meditation, prescribed to patients by a village doctor to improve quality of life, seemed to stop the constant bombing that terrorized the village, Davies said.

"We can only make peace ... by being peace," Davies said later.