I was going to start another thread for this but it seems to fit here. It's long and written from a pagan point of view so some of it will be strange to some of you, but I feel it has a very powerful...message

Peace Signs

Author: Adialia DragonStone

One blustery October day in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I stepped onto a curb with a woman I barely knew, and held a sign that said, “SAVE THE CHILDREN, STOP THE VIOLENCE.” I can remember spending the hour of silence thinking about the girl next to me. She reminded me of a high elf right off the screen of Lord of the Rings. Her silky hair fluttered easily in the biting winds while her piercing gray eyes were set to an unseen world beyond the one where we held signs. Her jaw was obviously relaxed and she was deep in prayer. Even her name was Witchy: Arianna. I knew she wasn’t one and she accepted I was.

Despite the common banner of Women in Black and our urgent sense of purpose, my mind wandered. I contemplated Arianna, elves from The Lord of the Rings and, naturally, paid near-obsessive attention to Legolas; anything but the nature of my sign and the nagging question in the back of my brain, “What is the point of this?”

My self-doubt grew harder to sedate with images of a tall, handsome and virile elf, when the taunts started up. The shouts were rarely creative and eventually all had the same theme: we were unpatriotic, traitorous, horrible, un-Christian, un-Southern women. Of course, Arianna wasn’t Southern and I wasn’t a Christian, but how they got that from signs that read, “Violence Begets Violence” and “Silent Vigil” is beyond me. I shifted foot-to-foot, juggling my signs and letting escape bored, plaintive sighs while watching the birdies fly by. Through it all, my partner was statuesque. As the hour wore on, I began to feel like a complete failure as an activist.

Come on, I pepped myself, you are freakin’ Witch – can’t you meditate on peace while standing up for an hour without being distracted with wanton desire for Legolas? I desperately tried to imagine world peace rising from the street corner beneath my feet and found that the ground sprung up with pea pods that released a mass of whirling pea-green globes in the protective circle I had laid. I was seriously annoyed with myself.

For weeks I would try to keep those peas from taking flight, as we stood. I was fulfilling a dream that had stayed with me for years, ever since the shaman had mentioned it in passing during a weekend retreat. The elder woman had told me about WiB starting in Jerusalem and being a weekly vigil for peace, protesting violence perpetrated against women, children and others for any causes. She never mentioned it to me again but the information was never far from my conscious memory. I often found myself thinking about women dressed only in black, lined up holding signs that silently tried to shame society into behaving itself. It appealed to my self-righteous nature.

When war broke out for the second time, my self-righteous nature encouraged me to become politically active for the first time in my 34 years. Inexplicably, I felt guilt, shame, and embarrassment and struggled with a feeling that I was somehow being dishonorable. All these emotions reminded me of one other pivotal moment in my life’s history, when I picked up The Witches’ Bible in lieu of the Holy Bible. Now standing on hard pavement to ground me to this dilemma, I was afforded time to consider what made those two moments similar. The uncomfortable nature of my internal search kept me shifting and sighing for months on the corner of MLK and Georgia Avenues while unwanted peas danced in my mind’s eye.

The questions wouldn’t stop any more than those damn peas would. Why didn’t I just put down this sign and stop coming? Why did I feel guilty and ashamed? My Divine Self urged me to break the code of answers. Those answers ran from me like Legolas over snow. I became consumed with mental preoccupation, determined to understand the answers that evaded me. My consumption lead to my defeat, and it was Arianna that paid the ultimate price. A breach was made into the protective circle while my mind fought peas on my unseen quest. She didn’t respond to the spit on her face and fists threatening her in the air. She didn’t move or acknowledge as I was ripped back onto this mortal plan to conjure up sorcery, silence and a sign to ward off her attacker.

Sobered by the obvious danger we faced, shields and defenses were not my concern when I took up my sign the next week. My husband priest stood blending into the background not 25 feet from us, watching, warding. For the first time since I had started to stand vigil I was free to the message the Divine had been sending all these months, a vision that didn’t involve peas.

I saw the war in Iraq, men clad in US military issue wounded and dead around a tank next to wounded and dead Iraqi men in state-issued police uniforms. The vision panned out past children without arms, burned beyond recognition of sex and age. It continued past mass graves created by new and old violence in Iraq, Sudan, Israel, South America and even here on my street corner in the Deep South where the bodies of slavery cried to me from beneath my feet. I panned out further and further until I could see the Mother Earth herself, nestled in the lap of the Sky Father, her eyes drowning in the tears. I could see sores oozing red violent blood all over her body.

Suddenly, the mother pulled me back to my Southern state, my city and my block. I could see me standing there faithfully holding my sign enveloped by blue energy being controlled and directed by an unassuming man in the background. Suddenly, I was plunged past the energy and into my own soul. I was hurtled down into the deep dark reaches beyond my personal veil. I sat for a moment in the dark chill of my own soul wondering why I was brought here. I stood to stretch and looked around as my spiritual vision adjusted, trying to see what the Great Mother was showing me.

I saw it: a single, bleeding sore. I approached perplexed. I have had therapy, ritual and a great marriage to heal my sores, I thought flippantly, how did this one escape? My right hand moved slowly and steadily toward it, drawn to its cherry redness. Contact came and I was ripped back through space into the body of the Sky Father. My finger was still attached to my soul way down there on the Earth of the Mother. This time, the source of all the red was evident to me. The Divine message finally spilled into my heart.

The weapons of violence must be so much closer than I had imagined, if the sores are so close to home. Something close is hurting me, us, everyone. After that vigil, I began to look for violent weapons in my life.

To my dismay, those weapons were easier to find than I had anticipated. That same evening, watching cartoons with my son revealed the first weapon in my home. Violence had become the brain food for my son, the games he wanted to play and the solution to the problems in his life. I was mortified. TV Time was replaced with Family Time and the ticking hands revealed other weapons. The angry words, disrespectful tones and flippant non-caring attitudes we gave each other spread violence like influenza in my home. Inoculating our family wasn’t easy, but my family thrived as if Beltane had come and the herbs of Litha were being harvested to heal us.

As my home grew healthier, the only sore was the nagging questions that continued: What am I doing holding peace signs?

We were in a new location near a New Age book store that we thought might get more traffic and prove a friendly venue, considering the shops in this Bohemian section of town. We quickly discovered that hippies loathe hippies who hold signs. We also learned that the Bohemian section of town was where young urbanites came to feel cool. They didn’t like us much either. We continued vigils there because we made an impact and that was the point after all.

While making this impact, another weapon of violence was revealed. With my unmistakable silver hair blowing around free in the breeze, I looked down the street and saw her. Dread filled me from toenail to fingernail. It was that Witch, the one I had a pissing contest with on the community e-list. The violent thoughts rose within me:
She is a fluffy bunny and a complete and utter stinking idiot, to boot. Every gathering she beds another partner who isn’t her husband, hello!?! To catch her next victim, man or woman, she wears absolutely nothing all event long. No one wants to see that! Dear Goddess! She has been Craft for, what, years now, but she doesn’t have the degrees I have. (I shoot a snide look down the sidewalk…) All right, she did get a 3rd from that other coven, but they did it out of pity not merit. Besides, all the things I know she has said about me, she deserves a quick slap to the face for the problems SHE causes in community. I hope she crosses the street. @#$%!
The violent thoughts washed over me as I tensed nearly every muscle in my body, strengthening my shields in anticipation of a coming onslaught.

My eyes glazed back as I shielded and in a dream-like trance I watched her. I never realized her hair glinted like that in the sun with those beautiful natural highlights of red and blonde. I continued to consider her face crinkled in anxiety and fear. Her thoughts began to waft into my soul, as clear as if her words had been spoken aloud. She was considering her options of crossing the busy street to miss passing me or sucking it up and walking straight by me. The running dialogue in her head overwhelmed me with sorrow and remorse:
She isn’t all that, but, Gods, she sure thinks she is. Miss Protest Fluffly Bunny girl holding her signs for peace. I bet that Kelly or OakWind wouldn’t think she had been very peaceful to them. I know what she told Harper about me. She thinks she knows so much with that perfect little brat of hers and having landed that man. Why in the name of all that is holy did that man handfast to her? He is a good priest and good looking too! She is just an erratic twit. I am just as good as she is and just as beautiful. I hope she doesn’t stop me. @#$%.
She passed in front of me with pain etched across her face. Her curse rang in my ears like an echo in the canyon of loneness that was a part of her soul. She didn’t hate me any more or less than she hated herself. I didn’t hate her any more or less than I hated myself. The sobering thought brought an instant hangover.

Wow - I am a @#$%, I dismally took stock. I stand here for worldwide peace and I am creating the violence that makes a stand for peace necessary! No wonder I feel ashamed of my activism.

I guzzled my anguish to refuel my violent thoughts. They won’t believe me, I reasoned to myself, as I put my signs in my trunk and slammed the lid with satisfaction powered by righteous indignation.

I know that they think I am a fluffy bunny; the bitterness quickly sprouting blood. Besides, WillowOak shouldn’t forgive me. I was truly horrible to her. Harper and Kelly, though, those arguments were just misunderstandings; it takes two to misunderstand. What can I do? If I am some pansy peace bunny then they will think they can step all over me. I haven’t been the only hurtful influence in this community and I certainly have not been the most destructive influence, either; my face flamed red with my growing self-righteousness.

They hurt me too!

I turned the ignition and glanced one last time at the spot where I had stood. A woman the color of jade rose from the sidewalk with clothes made of dirt, twigs and last fall’s leaves. Her jaded hands held a sign that read, “SAVE MY CHILDREN - STOP YOUR VIOLENCE.”

I don’t know how long I sat behind the wheel crying as I began to consider ways of addressing the different sores I had caused. I made a plan to simply cauterize some, treat some with the vitamins of kindness and love devoid of snippiness and anger, and treat others with a direct dose of the antibiotic of apology.

The medicine I applied the most liberally was tolerance and love directly to the wound in my own soul. I had found the answer to all those questions. The one who needed to read the sign was standing on the wrong side of it.