Two grandmothers stand for peace

That crisp, November morning, a huge, red crane and hundreds of giant boxes filled the square. Dozens of workers hustled to put the finishing touches on Macys' enormous artificial Christmas tree. Despite the clanging of the crane behind us, the shouts of the workers, and the increasing throng of traffic--motorized and pedestrian--all round us, I felt utter calm..

Image: Erecting the Macy's tree
San Francisco's Union Square, Nov 12, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

We picked a spot directly across from the giant department store, grabbed a couple of chairs and began our meditation. Once again, traffic swirled around us. We sat in front of the tour bus pickup and dropoff. Colorful double decker buses came and went, loading and unloading their camara-clad customers.

Well-heeled families and couples passed us, chatting about the sights they planned to visit that day. A scruffy but expensively clad young man with a an even more expensive guitar case walked by, his shiny, perfectly straight blond hair catching the wind like golden sails.

Peets Coffee sat up its mobile cart in front of Macys main entrance and people gathered round to grab pastries and steaming hot mochas and lattes.

With every distraction, I returned time and time again to my breath, cool air in, warm air out. Cool air in, warm air out. Peace settled into my heart, warming my chest as surely as a cup of hot chocolate might have. Peace settled into my bones. I could feel them easing into the chair, my feet connecting with the concrete and with the earth deep beneath them.

Our 108 minutes passed quickly. We turned to one another, smiled, and Sharon, the other grandmother, said, "I want to do this every Saturday morning."

Image: Union Square, facing
Macy's, from our sit spot
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Both Sharon and I have long been inspired by Sharon Mehdi's book, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering. It's a little tale, one Mehdi wrote upon the birth of her first grandchild, a gift of hope in a world of war. This story made its way around the world many times. Everywhere, grandmothers and the people who love them--people who yearn for peace, people who think just maybe we can make peace, finally--have taken the tale and made it real.

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: Two Grandmothers Stand for Peace:
On Saturday, November 19, we did it. We two grandmothers stood for peace across from City Hall. Bottom line: We look forward to our next stand. Here, as they say, is the rest of the story.

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View of City Hall from our
first stand for peace, November 19, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: Standing for Peace, We are as Stones
We stood for peace again this Saturday. I have to tell you, even though we are only two, I feel empowered.

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Facing City Hall and our Green Vehicle
Showcase in our second stand for peace
November 26, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

On Saturday, December 3, we stood for the third week. Here is an excerpt from Building Ordinary: What would happen if The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering Came True?
On Saturday, Sharon and I stood for peace outside City Hall, our third week. Under the blue, blue San Francisco sky, we two stood in silence, each in our thoughts, glancing to smile at one another now and then. One thought flared again and again: What would happen if our numbers grew? If we became four? If four became eight, and eight sixteen? What would happen if Sharon Mehdi's story, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World, came true?

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Grove of pollarded trees behind us as
we stood for peace on December 3, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

On Friday night, December 9, Facebook held its annual holiday party in the plaza. We arrived the next morning to semi trucks parked all around the plaza, lots of tents and concession stands, lots of plastic cups, plastic wrappers and cigarette butts on the ground. Workers hustled to and fro, tearing down the tents, loading up the trucks.

After our stand, I turned around to snap a few shots of the commotion. What struck me as I squinted at the image on my screen was the word TRUTH, in giant block letters. I hadn't noticed it until that day. Perhaps it's been there for years. It gives me no small comfort to know each week, as I stand for peace, that TRUTH has my back.

TRUTH behind us
as we stand, December 10, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

It's a warm, sunny day as we approach the plaza this morning. The giant Christmas tree, tattered and nearly blown off its pedestal a few weeks ago, is righted, its lights restrung, glistening baubles hanging from every branch. Gaily dressed elves and costumed dancers busily put the finishing touches on little ice-filled pens where hundreds of children will make snow balls and snow people later today.

Santa is nowhere in sight. His sleigh is tilted a bit, its sparkling packages strewn artfully about a tiny ice hill.

Santa's tilted sleigh
behind us on a sunny December Saturday, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

San Francisco's gift to its children: A snowy hill to slide down in the sunny warmth of a December day, right behind us as we stand today. The sign says, no adults allowed!

We stand, easily distracted, and also buoyant with the festive air. Yet, as I stand, with this extravagant, costly array behind me, I am aware that in this city, many children are sleeping in cars because they have no home. Far too many do not have enough to eat. Ever. Some of them will get a special Christmas box full of groceries and perhaps a present for each child to unwrap on Christmas morning.

I can't help wondering if the rich food on tummies unused to such fare will be too much for the children. Will they throw up as my siblings and I did one winter after eating a holiday meal? Unable to digest meat, sauces and sugars our bodies had been so long denied, our bellies spit it all back out.

Ski slope behind us
December 17, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

During our stand each week, busloads of tourists, many of them speaking languages of other lands, offload and make their way across the plaza, stopping every twenty or thirty feet to take pictures of one another against the backdrop of our gilded hall.

Always they head for the steps, try the doors (closed on weekends), and peer in the windows, then pose again for one another, as though at a magnificent shrine.

And so it is. Here decisions are made every day that affect not only San Franciscans, but people all over the world. Enormous sums of money funnel through these walls, electronically in this day and age. Many individuals grow wealthier and wealthier in this sometimes golden city. Others grow more poor, walking the streets dazed and dirty.

Each week, I stand before this edifice, praying for peace, breathing in the cool air, exhaling my lung-warmed breath. I visualize a world where monied wealth for its own sake is an abomination, or so impossible the people don't imagine it at all. I visualize a generous world, a world where people care more about honoring and respecting one another than proving they are right, than amassing wealth, than finding ways to feel they are superior.

And then I realize that such thoughts come from a place of judgment, and I remember to focus again on my breath, just the breath. In. Out. The one thing that unifies us all. Breathing in. Breathing out.

View of City Hall's gilded doors from our
stand for peace, December 24, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: Standing for peace after Zap! Bam! Pow!:
Okay, it wasn't exactly Zap! Bam! Pow! We had words. Saturday, the last day of 2011, in our mini version of The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering, Sharon and I stood for peace in front of City Hall for the sixth week in a row. We'd had a rough morning.

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View of City Hall as we stand
New Year's eve, 2011
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

The colors of fall still grace our city as we make our way to the plaza this early January morning. I am calm, filled with the glow that comes of rest, health and frequent meditation. But I am also aware of suffering in the world, tragedies and traumas and most particularly, those human against human atrocities that send me reeling day after day. How to effect a lasting change that will heal the hearts of those who hate, those who carelessly and recklessly disregard the dignity of their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers?

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: Peaceful morning on our way to stand for peace:
As I prepare for our seventh stand, I ask for peace in my heart, peace in my soul, and a stillness of being that I might hear and understand next steps, not only for today, but for 2012.

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Autumn colors grace the city
January 7, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

January 14, 2012. It's been raining for days. We didn't know whether we would be able to stand for an hour if the rain came down as it has in the last few days and most of the night. As we board the train, blue sky peeks through the clouds. The drizzle that hit my face when I left the house is already merely a mist.

Miraculously, while we stand, the sun comes out and the rain ceases entirely. Just as we're climbing from the train on our return, the rain slams down hard. I open my umbrella and nearly lose it. All I can think of right now is the men and women we saw picking up their sleeping bags and meager belongings from the rain-soaked ground as we arrived in the plaza this morning.

I know for a fact there are not enough shelters to keep them all safe and dry. Where will they go? Where did the lucky ones sleep last night?

We cannot make peace in the world until we find a way to provide care for those who cannot care for themselves.

View of City Hall from United Nations Plaza
January 14, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

As we arrive today, we wonder if there is an outdoor rock concert scheduled for this afternoon. Once again, the four streets surrounding the plaza are packed. This time, the streets are lined with huge semi trucks, their doors thrown open, men and women hustling stage and sound equipment to the grass. Wherever there's a gap, a luxury tour bus pulls in to the spot and offloads what appears to be at least a hundred passengers each.

They're carrying signs, but we can't quite make them out. A couple of men arrive and begin setting up a Raider's booth almost directly in front of us. Ah, I think, distracted from my meditation, this has something to do with tonight's big playoff 49ers football game. Don't know why the Raiders would set up a booth, but perhaps in solidarity with a local team.

Soon, though, graphic images come out, and we understand. Today is the anniversary of Roe V Wade, the Supreme Court decision that ended deadly back alley abortions and affirmed a woman's right to privacy in choosing how her body is used. I have never had an abortion, and I do not know whether I would have made that decision, given certain circumstances, but I am a mother. I believe a woman knows whether she is ready to bear a child, whether her health physically and mentally can withstand a pregnancy, birth and the intense vigilance required to assure a child is raised with all the love and nurture it needs to start it on a healthy life path.

As I stand for peace this day, facing these brutal images, I understand that for some of these people at least, if not for all of them, the work they are doing to support their position is one way they hope to bring justice to the world. I imagine what it would be like to believe so deeply that every egg and sperm deserve a chance to come together and grow, what it would be like to feel hurt by the early termination of a pregnancy, mine or another's.

I am also aware that I do not see, in their persistent belief that all people must believe and act as they do, a desire for peace making. I find myself resistant to the notion that they have a peaceful intent in their hearts. I ask for guidance.

Moments later, one of the women disengages from the group and walks toward us with a clipboard. Would you sign our petition, she asks. Her eyes are soft, kind, her face relaxed in exactly the way I feel mine relaxed as I do this standing meditation. Our eyes meet, we smile at each other, linger a bit longer, sending love to one another.

I asked for guidance. I love how responsive Spirit is.

Though we may disagree on this issue, this kindly woman and I, and though I may find some of her companions' ways violent and destructive, I have seen into the heart of this woman who would deny all choice regarding a woman's reproductive freedom. I have looked into her eyes and seen that she is doing what she feels is right, just as I, standing here today, am doing what I feel is right.

May she be blessed. May we somehow find a way to live in harmony with one another, despite our widely disparate views. May we find a way to honor and respect, each the other's right to live as her conscience guides her. Most especially, I pray that not one child be brought unloved into the world ever again, that not one 12-year-old girl, raped by her father, be forced to bear the child he planted in her, that not one rape victim be forced to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and that not one woman, teenager or child die from a back alley abortion, ever again.

Workers unload equipment for today's rally
January 21, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

February 4, 2012. This morning, as we approach our standing spot, we see a colorful dragon's head, and what looks like the body of a fish. As we get closer, we discover the fish is part of the dragon's tail. These pieces will soon be assembled into a sparkling float to carry dignitaries in the upcoming Chinese New Year parade on February 11.

Standing, I feel grounded, sharing space with the powerful dragon symbol. Is it a coincidence that the most revered Chinese symbol, the dragon, visits us in this year of such portent in the Mayan calendar and other mythologies? Might this year of transformation and change be guided somewhat by the wisdom of the dragon?

Dragon parts litter the plaza
January 28, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Sparkling in the morning sun, the dragon greets us as we enter the plaza a few minutes early. We gawk and click picture after picture like the most avid of tourists. Somehow this bright color in the dreary plaza warms us. We are giddy, like children, watching the sunlight play off her shiny scales, wondering what the people chosen to sit in the places of honor will think of their ride. Will they be humbled at the respect shown to them? Or prideful? A little of both?

Standing today, watching the parade of people pass my field of vision, I am reminded of the huge disparities between citizens of our land. Something like Chinese royalty will ride in that float next week. Perhaps our mayor, San Francisco's first Chinese mayor, will be among them. I think of the horrors the Chinese workers faced when they came to this country to build our railroads. They were a commodity, like grain, to the railroad bosses. Expendable. Work them to death. Plenty more where they came from.

I feel tears smarting my eyes as I accept yet again that my country was built on the backs and lives of slaves and near slaves. So much of the wealth we enjoy today is a result of slave labor. Indeed, hardly a day goes by that I do not read of the slave labor, and near slave labor, employed in China, India and elsewhere to build our toys--our computers and smart phones and so much more.

I ask for guidance. How to tell this story so it is accessible to others, not just one more sad tale? Immediately, an idea comes, whole cloth. I give gratitude for our stands. Though I seldom succeed in stilling my mind. Almost always, I come away with some new insight or solution to a problem of conscience.

The dragon now stands, about to let out a ferocious roar
Feburary 4, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

The first thing we notice when we get off the subway escalator is that there are no homeless people in United Nations Plaza. We see men wearing scarves tied around their heads, bling and brand new, very expensive baggy pants slung so low they practically have to belt them around their knees.

Crossing the street, we see TV cameras, ordinary people, eyes wide open, wearing fresh, clean, unwrinkled clothing. What's going on? Then we see the sign on the Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium: "America's Got Talent Auditions." Within minutes, hopefuls line the block next to the auditorium. Soon they line our side of the street as well, snaking around the lawn.

People come and go, excited, smiles wrapped round their faces, gesticulating and speaking in high-pitched voices. What if ... ? What if ... ? People with guitars, people with costumes that so distract us we look at each other with questioning eyes. People with dogs and yes, even a pony, with the fluffiest blond tale. A rocket man takes off, soars into the sky and lands in front of the auditorium doors. Our ears ache for twenty minutes afterward.

All the while, we stand, trying to maintain our silence, returning again and again to our meditation, aware that none of our regulars are in the park this morning. Not the homeless. Not the young man who walks round and round the block, glancing at us or studiously not glancing at us with each round. Not the elderly couple, she pushing him in his wheel chair, he sometimes struggling to walk with a multi-pronged cane, the chair right behind him, to catch him should he fall.

We are humanity. People with dreams and prayers and loves and losses. People cut off from mainstream society by illness--mental or physical or both. People striving to grow a good world. People striving to get by. I pray, standing here, that each and every person receive what she needs, that love fill his heart, that peace grow from here to there and there and there and back to here.

America's Got Talent audition marquee at
Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium
February 11, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: What the plaza teaches me when I stand for peace today:
Sharon, the other grandmother with whom I stand each week, is sick today--flu bug. I stand by myself for the first time. Surprisingly, I do not feel alone. Standing next to one of the pollarded sycamores in the grove, I feel warmth coming from the tree. It is chilly this morning. Somehow the tree has heat to spare and gives off just enough to warm me until the sun peaks over the tall buildings behind me and brightens the entire plaza. The gilded fretwork on the doors of City Hall gleams and glints blindly as the sun hits it.

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Jogger and elderly couple with wheelchair
fourteenth stand for peace
February 18, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

There is an old saying: Until the last person is free, none of us is free. That is how I feel as I stand for peace today, amidst the pain and suffering of the men and women who drag their few belongings to the piazza every night and try to stay safe and warm and to get a little sleep.

Most of these people ended up on the street because of mental illness. Some are here because a combination of medical bills and employment factors, exacerbated by their inability to hold a job due to health problems, caused them to lose their homes. And yes, of course, some are here because an addiction got the better of them.

Walking the same route to work from the subway for six years, I watched one new street-comer after another slide quietly into the hopelessness and despair that the street offers.

Once on the street, even the most respectable looking man or woman eventually succumbs to the succor of drugs. I've witnessed individuals down on their luck gradually decline from a person with bright eyes, a ready smile in front of the sadness, and words of hope and belief that this is only temporary.

In the first months, even the first year or two, they studiously maintained hygiene, as difficult as it is when no public facility permits bathing or even washing up. Over time, their clothing, at first showing the middle class affluence they once knew, frayed and tore. Eventually, the burden of trying to wash a few things out in public restrooms, where such washing is strictly forbidden, and dry them in the damp air, became too much.

Increasingly forced to suage their hunger and thirst by eating and drinking from garbage can refuse, they lost their health and their teeth. By the second or third year, regulars along my path to work or neighborhood degraded to ragged, filthy clothing, unwashed hair, and eventually, the rheumy, blood-shot eyes, rambling speech, and filth that bespeaks hopelessness and self-medication with whatever drugs are available for the quarters and dollar bills they collecedt in a day.

Can I blame them for succumbing to the comfort drugs bring, for whatever ease they provide to the pain of daily vomiting up rotten food and living in a constant state of fear and sleep deprivation?

The unloved, untended mentally ill, and those unfortunate individuals who have used up every last resource, wind up here, in Joseph Alioto Performing Arts Piazza to sleep at night. Not all of them by far. Our city alone gives meager succor to thousands of disenfranchised homeless wandering the streets by day, seeking any warmth at night.

For me, walking the gauntlet of the homeless toward our standing spot each week, there can be no peace on earth until we find a way to take care of these, "the least of our brethren," as Jesus said.

Until we do, I wear shame blazened on my back and on my forhead for my collusion in this tragedy repeated over and over and over again.

Image: Homeless man sleeping with all
his belongings as I enter the piazza
February 25, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

Throughout our stand today, people enter the piazza carrying square foam mats as blue as as the sky above us. Several wear bright blue or yellow jackets. Some also wear brilliant yellow baseball caps with matching scarves.

Though they arrive, many of them, in smiling groups of two, three or four, they do not speak to one another. They seem contemplative. Are they part of a class, or on a scavenger hunt? As the hour progresses and more and more enter the piazza, it is clear they are on their way to a meeting.

Near the end of our stand, Sharon grabs my hand and gestures behind us. There, sitting in tidy rows on cushions, perhaps 75-100 people silently move their arms in graceful gestures akin to the gestures of Tai Chi or Chi Gong. The faint strains of meditation waft across the piazza.

Our timers go off, gently reminding us that our one-hour stand is complete. As a man approaches us carrying one of the sky blue mats, I beg his pardon and ask if he can tell us a bit about this gathering.

We are practicing Falun Dafa, he says, a Chinese meditation and healing practice that is widely gaining followers around the world. He hands us a brochure, invites us to participate, should we choose.

I feel love and the sweetest joy at finding so many people coming out on a Saturday morning to make peace in the piazza. What hope for our world!

Image: Falun Dafa group practicing healing meditation
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

Excerpt from Building Ordinary: Spring in the plaza, in our hearts and a hot flash of rage:
With the greening of the tree across the street from our standing spot, my heart seems to be greening and waking up as well.

When I first began standing for peace several years ago, thought I was standing for peace on Earth. I was. I am. I do. What becomes ever more clear, each time I stand, is that when I stand for peace, I change me. I am greening with hope and peace as surely as the tree greens with the new life of spring.

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One green tree at City Hall
Stand for Peace, March 10, 2012
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

All around us in the plaza today, vendors rush to set up their booths and canopies, readying for the throngs to come when the St. Patrick's Day parade reaches its destination here at San Francisco City Hall. We are distracted in our meditation, bursting into conversation frequently. Read all about it in San Francisco turns green for St. Patrick's day while we stand for peace.

Green-haired tuba player passes us
on his way to the parade,
just as we leave the plaza
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

It's raining like the dickens when I emerge, alone today, from the subway into UN Plaza. Luckily, there is little breeze, and the rain falls nearly straight down during my hour-long stand. Sharon stands at home today, and at first I thought I might be nuts to insist on going out in this weather, but I stand for peace at home nearly every morning. It's important somehow that I make this public stand. Whether anyone sees me or knows what I'm doing is not so important. I know.

But the rain is mostly soft and gentle, the air clean and fresh. Bird song serenades all round the plaza. Baby birds chirp their joy, it seems, at being alive on this day, and I feel like joining them.

Few of our regulars are here today, only an occasional jogger, and the odd person walking by in shorts and flip-flops for all the world like it's a gorgeous sunny day. The homeless who sleep here nearly every night are nowhere to be seen, but the young mom who rushes past with a double-decker stroller and two energetic little boys, usually racing ahead of her, pushes past along the sidewalk. As she has each time we've spied her, she wears a long poplin coat, flapping open as she hurries down the street. Her flip-flops splash water up her bare legs and onto her long, long braid, that reaches almost to her knees.

One of the boys is well-dressed, has a professional haircut. The other is dressed more shabbily, his clothes appearing to have been worn by many children, his hair haphazardly cut. I can't help wondering about this mom's story and ask that she has all she needs this day and every day.

I stop at the local hardware store on my way to stand this morning amidst a full-blown downpour and pick up a pair of red, plastic galoshes. I put them on in the store, bagging my shoes. The train is down, so I grab a bus, which takes longer. I arrive late, and dripping, holding my umbrella steady with all the strength of my two hands.

The first person I see, huddled under the eaves of a stage door to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is one of the homeless men who panhandles us for coffee money almost every week. His lips bite themselves over his toothless gums, and though he is bundled in a heavy jacket and hoodie, I can't help thinking he must be very cold. I have no cash to offer him today and pass by, wondering where he slept last night.

That question is soon answered. At least, I hope it is. Rounding the corner to cross the street into the plaza, I see dozens of homeless lined up under the sheltering eaves of the auditorium. For once, the police must have had mercy on them, affording them at least that much respite from the tearing wind, rain and cold. Shopping carts and backpacks litter the entire length of the building, nearly a city block.

Staying dry, if not warm in my new red boots
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved

Remembering frigid nights and days in a soggy camping tent, our sleeping bags soaked through, the meager campfire more smoke than flame, I can't help wondering what is wrong with our society that we cannot take care of these, the people among us who for whatever reasons are so little able to take care of themselves. Oh, their pride would say otherwise, but no one wants to sleep on a concrete walk, in fear of their life, in the blowing rain and wind.

While I stand, I watch workers erect two shelters over the steps of city hall, a large one, presumably for dignitaries and speeches, another one spanning the sidewalk, presumably for guests and media. Four red party trucks rest at the curb as the workers unload their goods and struggle in the blowing wind to assemble, raise and stabilize these flighty structures.

What can possibly be so important that (very likely) minimum wage workers must labor in the cold and wet on slippery ladders for well over an hour to set up a structure they will only have to take down a few hours later? In a city struggling to meet its payroll and serve its neediest citizens, how can we possibly justify the expense of these canopies, neither of which will provide more than the tiniest respite from the storm.

Soon my hour will end, I will slosh back to the bus and ride in relative comfort to my safe, warm home, where love, family, good food and as much hot tea and coffee as I desire await. A quirk of fate and I could be among the huddled homeless, stamping their feet to keep warm, and very likely mourning the loss of panhandling profitability. Where will they get the money for sugar-laden coffee, and yes, perhaps the drugs and alcohol that numb their bodies and minds to the tortures of their every day?

Workers erecting canopies in the pouring rain
© L Kathryn Grace - All rights reserved