Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: Peace Growing

Wooden peace sign outside my workshop

I have an affinity for this peace symbol. I was born in 1958, the year the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament adopted it as its logo. CND's logo was everywhere I looked during my childhood, but to me it meant peace. I remember drawing peace signs as a kid, making a "sand candle" in the shape of a peace sign. I never thought about how or why it was created. I grew up rather dysfunctionally, and the peace signs I made were personal symbols of love and kindness.

Today, this symbol has come to mean so much more than an anti-war symbol or a nuclear disarmament logo. For me, it represents a state of mind that I embrace, and when I embrace this state of mind, there's no place for war. To me, it's not anti-anything. It's peace. Simply peace.

The peace symbol arose from a campaign to stop nuclear armament in the late 1950s, grew to represent the anti-war movement of the 1960s and eventually was embraced by the counterculture hippies of the 60s. I've seen a resurgence of its popularity recently, and I believe it represents a shift toward a more pure expression of peace than before. We're not fighting against what we don't believe in, we are embracing what we do believe in. To fight against something gives that something power. Turn your back on it, and focus on what you believe in, and "something" loses its power.

I believe my children and their generation are experiencing a shift in our belief system, what some might call a paradigm shift - away from the negative and into the positive. 

It has to do with how the universe operates. The universe - this world we live in - supports us in everything we do, everything we think, everything we say. If you're always against something, that something is always going to be there for you to be against. If you are always for something (even if you don't currently experience it) it's going to be there for you to experience it in some form or another.

I'm not against war so much as I'm for peace, and I'm not just talking about men and women with guns fighting other men and women with guns. I'm talking about everyday living wherever you are at any given moment.

There are plenty of people among us who wage war. But the number of people waging peace is growing.

Peace is growing.

close-up of a soul pot, 5" dia.