Conifer Rotary Celebrates Blessing of Peace Park Installation at the Aspen Park Community Center
Amidst aspens in full glory, a blessing ceremony to celebrate the inaugural stage of the Conifer Rotary Peace Park took place on Sunday, September 25 at the Aspen Park Community Center.
The Conifer Peace Park is a place to reflect on peace and to hold events dedicated to peacebuilding.
The park’s central Conifer location, in a lovely grove of aspen trees behind the Aspen Park Community Center (APCC), was made possible by the APCC Home Improvement Association. The park also received generous support from Rotary Club International District 5450, Rotary Club of Conifer, Peacebuilding Club members, and the Conifer community, which contributed funding, skill and sweat for the park.
“Although the installation has only begun with the placement of benches and boulders, persons who have visited the park say it already gives off a peaceful aura,” said Stanley Harsha, co-chair of Conifer Rotary Peacebuilder Committee. “The project will be completed by May 2023 with native landscaping and peace poles with messages of peace.”
Rotary Club of Conifer President Diana Phelps cut the ribbon marking the beginning of the Peace Park. She noted that the 285 Corridor’s first peace park is being realized in only four months from conception to installation.
The park will hold events in the future to commemorate peace and to educate about peace, with an emphasis on reaching children.
Dennis Swiftdeer Paige, Peacebuilding Club member and the park’s landscape designer, offered a Native American Coal Bundle blessing, carefully collected and containing a piece of coal from The Sacred Fire at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
Bobby Siles, trained by Lakotas as a certified medicine man, blew sacred smoke to bless the park as a place of peace.
This park takes its place among over a hundred peace parks worldwide. Rotary International established its first peace park in 1932 at the U.S.-Canadian border.
One feature of the park is a boulder with an inscription of the Rotary Four-Way test, which embodies principles of peacebuilding. "Of the things we think, say or do:
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”
For more information, e-mail stanleyharsha@outlook.com