Peace Poles for the greater good
By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun contributor
The phrase “May Peace Prevail On Earth” is a straightforward wish. It carries no political baggage. It’s a sentiment that can be shared by all humans — who doesn’t want peace? — regardless of other opposing worldviews.
And it’s a thought that launched a Northern Michigan business.
In the 1980s, that antique time when people still spoke face-to-face, Maple City residents Carol and Joe Spaulding were talking with friends. At the time, they were part of an intentional community in East Jordan, and conversation about big and small ideas was a valued community practice.
“There was a lot of political trouble (in the 1980s), and the nuclear threat was upon us,” Carol said. “We were concerned about … counteracting the way things were going in the world.”
Carol laughs at this point in the retelling. “We’d read an article — when people still read the newspaper — about a Japanese-American woman who’d brought peace poles to the United States,” she said.
The pole, eight foot tall (about six feet tall after planting) with four sides, had the phrase “May Peace Prevail On Earth” printed in English and three other languages.
“We liked the idea, that the peace pole could act like acupuncture for the earth,” said Carol, who began to visualize herself as part of a movement to plant these poles and the thought they carried. “The discussion we were having with our friends at the time was also about right livelihood. I brought up the idea of bringing peace poles here and said I thought our community should connect with it.”
The Spauldings wrote a letter — when people still wrote letters — “to the only address we could find,” to inquire about bringing peace poles to East Jordan from Japan. This letter went to the World Peace Prayer Society founded by Masahisa Goi, a witness to the horrific devastation that followed the U.S. dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 — 70 years ago. In 1955, the 29-year-old Goi began, just as the Spauldings had, talking in small groups about his vision of global peace and harmony, and authored the universal peace message that got the Spauldings’ attention.
Shipping readymade peace poles from Japan to the United States “was too expensive,” Carol said. So, through a series of letters, meetings and phone calls, the Spauldings were vetted and got the blessing of the World Peace Prayer Society to build them, which they began doing in 1985. Three years later, the family relocated themselves and their Peace Pole business to Leelanau County. Joe Spaulding employed his construction skills to create a house and workshop on their 20-acre homestead, where the work of helping peace to prevail continued until 2001. The business and the mission were picked up by another Leelanau County couple who bought the business, Dave Moffat and his then partner, Kate Reedy. Kate worked for the Spauldings.
Dave Moffat estimates that he has shipped more than 5,000 peace poles around the world in the last 14 years. He continues the Spauldings’ practice of building poles from disease-resistant cedar, and coats them with a low-impact (“As environmentally-friendly as you can get,” Dave said) water-base stain to extend the life of the pole.
The phrase that launched a business can be translated into thousands of languages, from Arabic to Zulu. It’s silk screened onto a 33-inch long Plexiglass plaque and affixed to the pole.
Peace poles can be found in public and private locations; planted at secular and spiritual gathering places. “Part of the beauty of the peace poles is that they are frequently dedicated as part of a ceremonial gathering, an occasion when folks come together in community,” Carol said. “A church, a Girl Scout troop, an Earth Day celebration, a family reunion — these were … opportunities for dedicating a peace pole.
“We learned of schools where conflict resolution skills were being taught. The schoolyard peace pole would be the meeting place where playground spats could be resolved.”
The machines of war and violence show no evidence of growing creaky and obsolete. If one is in doubt, then here comes the 24-hour news cycle. Those regular dispatches from the frontlines dispel any illusions. So, if one accepts this scenario, one wants to ask how a cedar pole with some nice words on four sides of it can prevail against the Leviathan?
“That’s a good question,” Carol Spaulding writes in an email response. “Ideally, (people who buy a peace pole) would have the intention of wishing for, and thinking about, peace; and perhaps this would lead to some small action in each individual’s life. The physical presence of the peace pole (would be) a reminder to those folks as they passed by it in their daily lives.”
In the Spauldings’ daily lives, making and shipping peace poles “to all corners of the earth … helped us feel more connected to others and, we hoped, was one small step toward the greater good.”
