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Dear S.A.R.A.H.,

I just wanted to keep you in the loop about the Peace Tapestry. As you can see from the two pictures, I took the tapestry to the children's chapel at St. Mary's on Sunday morning. The Sunday School teachers and I explained where the tapestry came from . We discussed our journey to Mexico to build a house. We talked about Jews, Muslims and Christians. We discussed how Jesus was a Jew who believed the most important things were to love God and to love our neighbors. We all agreed that if Jesus were to look at us, he would be more interested in how we love God with our whole heart and how we love our neighbors as ourselves than in whether we go to a church, a temple or a mosque. We talked about how SARAH was started to keep talking about how women and mothers could create peace.

So in response to the honor of having the peace tapestry in our church for the next five or six months, the children are discussing three things. The first is how they will present the tapestry to the adults in both the 8:00 service and the 10:00 service on a Sunday sometime in the next two months. When they present it, they will be speaking to the adults about peace. They are planning to tell the adults (in all humility) what they see that needs to happen so there will be peace when the children become adults. After all, they said, it is the adults who are the stewards and decision-makers in the world. They are preparing the world for the children of today. So it is only fitting that these children should tell their parents and other adults what kind of world the current younger generation would like to live in when they become adults. (I hadn't thought about it before, but maybe some of the people from SARAH would like to be in the congregation when the children make this presentation.)

Secondly, the children are wondering how they might communicate with children of their age in the temple and the mosque. They said it they didn't really know many Jewish or Muslim children so they couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. They agreed that Jesus, on the night before he died, said he wanted people to sit down together and break bread and share wine together. So because of what Jesus told us to do, the children are thinking they want to plan a picnic where they will invite all the children from the mosque and all the children from the temple to come to a park where we will eat together, probably not drink wine, but at least have sandwiches and sweet bread and cookies. Maybe we will be able to find some songs we can all sing together. They haven't completed the plans, but they are beginning to talk about how they want to prepare for this event. Since they don't really know all the other kids yet, they are having the picnic because they think that is the kind of thing Jesus would do. So after Easter, maybe we can have a picnic together.

The third thing they are thinking about is where they will be sending the taspestry when it is time to send it to another place. We talked about how we need to find places where people are working to create peace. Since we hear more about war and fear today, we will need to do some research to find places where people are working really, really hard to create peace. If you have any ideas, we would welcome hearing from you. We are preparing to look all around the world to find the place that could really use some help, some recognition and some celebration to help move their efforts forward.

So here we are: thinking about what we want the world to be like in the future and how we want our parents and their friends to help make the world better and more peaceful, how we want to meet other kids and their families, especially from the temple and the mosque at a picnic, and finally to see where we want to send the peace tapestry next. We will keep sending you messages about our progress. Our teachers and helpers will probably be in touch to find out a good day for a picnic.

Our love to you,

The kids at St. Mary's

Fr. Will Crist

St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Laguna Beach, Ca

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