Picnic for Peace

You've walked for peace with us in the city streets. Now we're asking you to come a little further — out past the traffic and the noise, into the country, where the ground has its own story to tell.

We are gathering at Amelia Court House, Virginia, for a Picnic for Peace.

This is not a march. There are no speeches scheduled and no agenda to rush through. This is something quieter and, we think, something deeper — a chance to sit together on land that has held extraordinary history. Land that once saw the final desperate days of a broken army. Land that was farmed by hands whose names were never recorded. Land that the Appomattox River has been flowing past for centuries, patient and unhurried, long before any of us arrived.

We are coming here to remember. To breathe. To be in community with one another and with the earth beneath us.

What to bring:

This is a potluck, and we mean that in the fullest spirit of the word. Bring something made, grown, or gathered — something you'd be proud to set on a shared table. A dish, a loaf of bread, a jar of something you put up last summer, a handful of flowers from your yard. Whatever you bring, bring it as an offering to the circle. We will eat together, and in that eating, we will practice the thing we're all here for: reciprocity.

Bring a blanket or a low chair. Bring comfortable shoes — there are trails here worth walking. Bring your children if you have them. Bring your questions and your grief and your hope.

A small ask:

We are grateful to be welcomed onto this land, and there is a $15 donation requested per person to help cover the cost of the site. Pay what you can. No one will be turned away for lack of funds — please reach out privately if you need support.

YOU WILL BE GIVEN THE ADDRESS ONCE YOU REGISTER.

You are welcome to wear orange, if you wish, as a gesture of solidarity with the monks walking for peace whose presence and devotion inspired this gathering.

We walk not to fix the world from a distance,
but to take responsibility for our part in it —
to carry peace in our nervous systems,
to let it move through our steps,
and to offer it back to the Earth and to one another.

Come as you are.
Walk with the Earth.
Listen for what is alive within you.
Let peace take root.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Laura Giles - Surviving to Thriving