Hawai'i school children contribute cloth to peace quilt

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Religion & Ethics Writer

James Twyman was at the border of Kosovo and Macedonia, an area rife with conflict, when it came to him in a dream.

He dreamed of a milelong quilt, made up of small bits of cloth that had been held and prayed over. He dreamed the quilt was being wrapped around the United Nations building in New York.

"I knew it was more than a dream," said Twyman, a singer called "the peace troubadour." "It was a kind of vision."

He started talking about it with friends and family. Someone sent out an e-mail asking people to donate pieces of cloth.

With no advertising, promotion or news coverage, the idea of the peace quilt nevertheless caught on.

A few months later, letters were arriving by the thousands, from all over the world, with small pieces of cloth inside them.

"We got people to sew them together, and by September 2000 (the quilt) was a mile long," Twyman said.

When he unwrapped the finished cloth, "it was kind of amazing," he recalled. "It kind of vibrates," he said. "You can feel the prayers that went into it."

That month, the cloth was wrapped around the U.N. building. Later it went around the base of the Capitol, then the Pentagon.

Twyman is in Hawai'i to sing and make appearances as part of the Season for Peace, organized here Jan. 30-April 4. The dates commemorate the anniversaries of the assassinations of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., respectively.

He performed this week on Maui and Kaua'i, and will be part of Saturday's Aloha Peace Day event (see information box, Page E1).

"This is a really good time" for a peace effort, said Wally

"Famous" Amos, who has been designated as the "Ambassador of Peace" for the 64-day season. "Before the next crisis."

Last year, the Cloth of Many Colors campaign turned its attention to children.

As part of the Season for Peace, schoolchildren around Hawai'i are gathering up material for an Aloha Peace Cloth, which will be incorporated into the international Children's Cloth of Many Colors.

Pieces will be woven together in time for a Season of Peace closing event in Honolulu on April 4. Hawai'i's portion of the children's peace quilt then will be sent to the Mainland, where it will be incorporated into a large banner to be presented on Sept. 11 in a peace event on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Lanikai Elementary students are spearheading the effort, and their cloth will be presented to Twyman on Saturday.

"Bring something that means something to you," Twyman urged in a phone call from San Diego, Calif., where he had been helping his new wife pack up for a move back to his hometown in Oregon. "Cut off a piece of cloth from a favorite shirt or a favorite blanket, or something that means something to you in particular.

"Hold that piece of cloth and feel what peace would feel like. ... Call it prayer, call it whatever you want, it's really expressed in the desire for peace."

One family sent a blanket that had belonged to their son, who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. "Everyone in the family had held the baby in this blanket," Twyman said. "It held the baby's energy with it."

Another woman sent the scarf she wore in the 1960s to anti-war demonstrations, which she used to wipe away her tears from the tear gas used at the time.

"People were sending the most important thing in their lives, they were so moved by it," said Twyman, who donated the cloth from his home altar.

On the Web:
clothofmanycolors.com or jamestwyman.com