Los Angeles Peace Picnic

On Sunday afternoon, September 18, the Guru Ram Das Ashram sangat of Los Angeles invited our neighbors to the sixth annual Peace Picnic. Featuring food from local restaurants and music from local musicians, we gathered in the park across the street to celebrate the UN’s International Day of Peace. Explained a beauty supply store owner as she handed me two gift baskets to be given away at the Peace Picnic, “There is goodness here. The country I come from was taken over by communists. My father suffered a lot of oppression. People here say it is not good. This is to say that it is good here.”

It’s a simple formula, based on the story “Stone Soup,” which Captain Kangaroo used to read to me. A couple of starving soldiers, walking home from war, stumbled into a village square. All the residents immediately run inside and lock their doors. No one will give the two hungry men a crumb to eat. One of the soldiers suddenly picks up a rock.

“This is just like the rock my mother uses to make her stone soup!” he exclaims. “All I need is a pot.” One villager opens his door just long enough to hurl a pot at the soldier. The soldier excitedly fills the pot with well water, gathers wood, lights a fire, drops the rock into the pot and begins stirring, all the while describing in mouth-watering terms his mother’s delectable stone soup. Suddenly he interrupts himself, “I remember my mother always put an onion in her stone soup. That was what made it so delicious.” A child tentatively approaches and hands him an onion, then dashes back into her house, and the door is slammed and bolted behind her. The soldier eagerly peels and chops the onion and drops it into the pot. As you may guess, he then recalls many other ingredients, which the villagers reluctantly contribute. At last, the soldier announces, “The stone soup is perfect. All we need now is some people to eat it.” Needless to say, he is promptly surrounded by all the villagers, bowls and spoons in hand, and they enjoy the hearty soup together.

The Peace Picnic started with a shooting in the neighborhood, followed by an article in the “Aquarian Times” encouraging us to celebrate the UN’s International Day of Peace, and a reminder of the Siri Singh Sahib Ji’s instruction that we should be known for our seva, or we will be persecuted. The point of telling you the Peace Picnic story is to encourage you to create your own peace picnic, or peace barbecue or peace concert — whatever you can cook up with your own local ingredients, to bring people together in the name of peace.

Children at the Peace Picnic

See more photos and learn more about this event at: www.peacepicnic.org.