Essay | “May Peace Prevail on Earth”

PRESTON TOWNSHIP, FILLMORE COUNTY – On a sultry afternoon in August, Harmony Garden Club members gathered in a rustic barn to create monuments to peace. 

Peace posts are not a new invention. They were started in Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Masahisa Goi. The mission of the Peace Pole Project is to spread the Universal Message of Peace.

Goi saw what devastation conflict could bring and sought creative ways of spreading the message of peace. His project started with peace workers across Japan putting stickers and posters in store windows and tacked to telephone poles. 

Each posting had the prayer, “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” 

Janet Erdman (right) lays out her design using stencils and painter’s tape. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

Today, wooden posts with that message exist on every continent in over 200,000 communities, often in multiple languages. The posts are now recognized as the most prominent monument dedicated to peace. Our Harmony club thought the world could use a few more of them.

Surrounded by the beauty of a rustic barn, garden club members Annika Torgerson (left) and Karen Leno (right) went to work creating their peace poles. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

The Harmony Garden Club is a social group with a yen for learning about living things. This group has spent time with local growers, studied native plants, insects, medicinal herbs, trees and more. 

Every May there is a hike to find wildflowers. Every July there is a roaming dinner where we tour one another’s gardens. 

And every year we strive to find a creative endeavor that fits with our mission. This year brought peace posts.

Roxie Tienter (left) and Barb Mielke (right) survey supplies and tools available for artists to choose from in creating their one-of-a-kind peace pole. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

With paints, markers, stencils and ideas, club members from Harmony, Preston, Lanesboro, Newburg and beyond added colors and images to their posts, infusing their work with good intentions and affirmations of peace. 

These posts will soon be planted in yards and gardens as beautiful reminders that people can cultivate peace in thought, word and action in big ways or small ways. 

Gary Powell and Laurie Tuohy are excited to go home and plant their new peace poles. Look for one by you! (Photo by Tim Little)

If you see a brightly colored post on your neighborhood rambles, take a moment to look for its message, appreciate the peace you know, and maybe make your own wish for peace for all living things on earth. 

“Peace is not something you must hope for in the future. It is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present, you will never find it.” — Thomas Merton, France and USA, 1915–1968