Walk through any town or city in the world, and in parks, squares, traffic circles, and in front of stately buildings you will confront the very worst of our history celebrated in stone and metal. You’ll see mighty generals frozen on bronze horseback and amble by walls etched deep with row after row of the names of the dead. The monuments to war are everywhere, but can you remember any of the monuments to peace that you’ve seen.

The closest I can get are the statues of Gandhi that stride along the edge of Union Square Park in New York and behind the ferry building in San Francisco, going nowhere, leading no one. I’ve seen small side altars to peace in a few churches, and once in North Carolina and then in northern California, I’ve come upon tall wooden posts covered with white plaques bearing the words for PEACE in different languages. On a recent trip to Seattle good friends took me to see a lovely peace garden and a statue dedicated to world peace, but those are the only ones I’ve ever seen.
About twenty years ago the angels that talk to me announced that one of the things I came into this world to do was to establish a movement for creating monuments for peace in every village, town, and city on the planet. That I had no memory of the agreement made little difference to them, nor did my best attempts to forget about it. They kept reminding me. About ten years ago, when things in the world seemed particularly dismal, I spoke to several artist and architect friends about this idea. They all liked it and wanted to be part of it. One thing the angels had been very clear about was that they didn’t want millions of dollars to be raised and spent so that more public statuary could thrust itself into the sky, confronting the already existing monuments to war. They wanted this to be a conceptual meditation project, where the “idea” of a peace monument would rise up, right across the street from every town hall, city hall, statehouse, and capitol building on the planet. I imagined small markers in those locations, telling people about the project and how to participate in it. But recently I spoke with the angels about it again, and of course they had another idea.
When I was a little boy I used to go to synagogue with my father’s father, who I adored. I remember what it was like to sit in a dimly lit room with rows of men praying (the women all sat upstairs) each at his own pace. A marvelous cacophony of voices filled the room, deep and high, on and off key, some loud and others barely a whisper, all of them blending into a joint hum, not unlike the buzzing of a beehive. That was the image the angels gave me for their project. Rather than having people all over the world visualize the same monument to peace, the angels prefer a cacophony of images, rippling out of the hearts and minds of people who are engaged with this process. They don’t want plaques erected, telling people exactly where to do this. Instead they want people to find their own places, somewhere across the street from their houses of government, so that peace is beamed out from a multiplicity of sites.
This is what they angels would like me to pass on to you about this project:

• Stand across the street from all the seats of power you find yourselves near, close your eyes, and visualize a monument to peace that suits your dreams. Tall or short, made of marble or water, metal or spun from light, create it in your mind’s eye and make it as vivid as you can. The angels suggest that the colors of peace are in the blue-green range so you may want to include them, or not.
• Stand for a few minutes picturing that monument, picturing all the people who will pass it and be moved by it, even though most of them won’t be intuitive enough to see it, knowing that a few will and will be grateful to you for creating it and inspiring them to stop and add to the energy of peace.
• Feel and know that the monument you create will beam out peace to all the representatives who serve in the building you’re standing near, touching them in their souls and awakening in them their own deepest yearnings for pe•ce.
• Imagine that this monument to peace is connected in a shimmering grid to every other such monument in the world. Feel the energy of peace vibrating between all of these monuments. Feel the web growing stronger and stronger as more and more of us do this meditation, so that all of the monuments and the energetic strands that connect them are beaming out peace to everyone in the world, everywhere in the wo• rld.
• Share the information about this project with everyone you know who is a peace activist. Without spending money better used for doing other things, we can create energy broadcasting stations for peace on every part of the planet.