Finding Peace with Lynn Heritage

[Lynn Heritage hanging the Italian Peace Flag.]

It’s been a dreary day—the sun hasn’t shown its face once. Yet, I’m supposed to talk to Lynn Heritage today to discuss her work with Grandmothers for Peace, an organization whose name has to make you feel hopeful. To prepare for this, I decide to calm myself down with dimmed lights and a collection of pumpkin spice and apple harvest candles. They’re flickering as Lynn returns my call. Her voice is calm, welcoming. We begin.

Q: I heard that you were a Grandmother for Peace. How did you become involved with this group?

A: "Well, I read about it towards the end of 2006 and did a little research, found out what it was about, and was very interested so I called and talked with the director trying to find out if there was a chapter somewhere close by. It turned out there was no chapter. There wasn’t even a chapter in North Carolina! So I decided well, I’m just going to try to start one… I just felt like it was something that needed doing in this community."

Every year, the Grandmothers for Peace, a worldwide organization, celebrate the National Day of Peace on September 21st. This past September was the Wilmington chapter’s ninth annual celebration. The Peace Day event brings in good music and all ages, but one thing remains the same: “Every year the one continuing theme we’ve always had is to have different people read from peace poems. And some of them are so beautiful you’re just amazed that a young child could be so wise.” The UN collects poems from children all over the world on the subject of peace and shares them each year.

[Peace quotes hung by children for Peace Day.]

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle, we won’t have to pass fruitless idle resolutions. But we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering.

Mahatma Gandhi

Peace Day isn’t the only way Grandmothers for Peace become involved, though. They participate in marches such as the Martin Luther King parade and work with numerous community organizations such as the YWCA and the rescue mission on Castle Street.

As Lynn says, “We’re growing into what we do.”

“The main thing that we want to do is to get the word out to the community that we’re here. Of course we’re all about peace globally, but we have to start somewhere. You have to start from home. So we’re really trying to see how we can integrate ourselves within the neighborhood, the community, just to say we are here, and if we can’t do anything more, we can let you know we care. We can do that.”

I ask Lynn how she stays calm on an everyday basis. Of course, this is a difficult question for anybody, no matter how enlightened. Lynn admits that she isn’t calm 24/7, but she does make time for “Om moments,” moments throughout the day in which she reminds herself, “Find your peace.” You don’t have to meditate for hours in solitude to find your peace.

Lynn’s conception of peace is simple yet full of wisdom:

“I just really do believe that if we could find a way for people to understand that somewhere in the middle is where we all need to meet, you know? It can’t be fully left, it can’t be fully right, it’s got to be somewhere in the middle. And if we could know that, and somehow convince each other of it, that’s when we could find peace.”

“I believe that there’s good in everybody and that’s where we come from. We all need to find our good and come from there. I believe it’s inside us, not somewhere else.”

Finding peace isn’t always so easy, though. I didn’t know that Hugh McRae gave the land to Wilmington for the park that would be named after him with the stipulation it would be for whites only. Now, there’s controversy over the park’s namesake. Lynn wrote a letter to the editor suggesting to change the name to “Wilmington Peace Park,” and as she says, “I was nowhere near prepared for the results that would come from that. It turned into opening up a hornet’s nest. I was really taken back by it. It’s not that I thought everyone would agree, but it showed the divide here. It showed the divide.”

Wilmington, like anywhere else, isn’t exceptionally peaceful. Angry responses defending the name were printed in the next paper. Peace poles, a potential compromise, were not allowed in the park because this is a “personal viewpoint” which cannot be permanently shown in a public space.

“Since when did peace become a viewpoint?” Lynn asks.

“What we’re doing now is looking for another door. Trying to force a name change would be counter-peaceful. It would cause so many hard feelings that we would lose the ground that we would gain, but I’m still thinking there’s got to be some way we can find that middle ground, a compromise somewhere along the way. That’s something that I’m still working on.”

Still, “It started a conversation, and if we can start conversations, maybe we can get them turned in a direction that works for everybody.”

Lynn remains devoted to peace, regardless of the tough road it takes to get there. “It is difficult, but what do you really accomplish if you do something in a non-peaceful way? Maybe you’ll get what you want, but it’s never going to be what you want because all these underlying troubles and issues with it are always going to be bubbling somewhere.”

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Q: Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get involved and make a difference?

A: "Yeah, I do. You know what? If you think something needs to be done, don’t wait around for somebody else to do it. Just do it."

Q: When and how do Grandmothers for Peace meet?

A: "We meet once a month on the second Tuesday of the month.

This is an open invitation to anyone. You don’t have to be a grandmother to come to Grandmothers for Peace meetings."

It’s easy to feel compelled to do something, to reach out, when you speak to someone like Lynn Heritage, someone who is sincerely trying every day for peace in her world. I ask myself, when’s the second Tuesday of November? And will I go? I hope so.

If you’re curious, the next Grandmothers for Peace meeting is November 10th at 2 pm at the Friends Meetinghouse on the corner of Chestnut and 5th Street.