What Does "Peace Starts With Me" Mean?
Peace Starts With Me is a call to all Americans to come together as one family under God, transcending boundaries and religious affiliations. Peace is our choice. We are only limited by the boundaries we create within ourselves.
So we asked participants from the Peace Starts With Me rallies what "Peace Starts With Me" means to them.
"Peace starting with me means I love you unconditionally. I'm there for you unconditionally. Whatever you need. Peace starts with me and my inner peace, God's inner peace. I give God's inner peace to you so that you can feel love just coming into the room. Whether you're coming in off the streets homeless, whether you're coming in as a single mother without knowing where to turn to, whether you're coming in and you've never had a mother or father, we are there to receive everyone with God's love and His kindness. Everything you need is within 'Me' to give back to you so that you see Christ in me." –Minister Cynthia Curtis
"Peace Starts With Me means the change that you want to make, that you want to see in the world, it starts within you. So you have to first start practicing what you believe in." –Akane Horii
“This whole Peace Starts With Me movement is allowing the peace of God to be on the inside, and to release that peace to the world.” –Dr. Walt Whitman, Director, Soul Children of Chicago
"What peace means to me is the place a society, a world, in which we can come together, despite your different religions, ethnicities, cultures, whatever, it doesn't matter where you come from. We're all one family underneath God. And that's what peace means to me: family." –Pedro Diaz
“Peace Starts With Me means I’m being a catalyst for my community, taking action where I see the need for action.” –Anonymous
“What I’ve realized is that it’s up to us to really cultivate the understanding of what peace really looks like. And I believe our purpose in the world is to love others and to encourage others to find peace and be a peaceful generation.” –Everett Guteriez, Motivational Speaker
“Peace is something that’s internal. It's about spirituality, and asking your conscience, “What should I do? What do I need to do?” –Misun Teah, Heavenly USA Team
“To me what Peace Starts With Me means is to have everything calm and controlled, and if you start something, you can have your brothers and sisters follow you. You be the leader.” –Anonymous
"When I think of peace, I think of genuine relationships, love, kindness, something that you create, and people smiling. It's very simple." –Kyosei Nagai
"Peace is kind of like that age old saying, 'If you want to see a change in the world, you have to be the one who makes it. If you want to see a difference, you need to be the one who starts it.' Peace is really about creating and building that world that you want to see, being that peaceful individual, because when you see the conflict of the world or of different people or different groups, you can see that's a larger scale of what's happening inside of yourself. So only through finding out how to be a peaceful individual can we actually start to make a peaceful world. You can't create peace if you've got people filled with hate. So that's kind of what Peace Starts With Me means. It's a lot of love. It's a lot of tranquility, and it's a pretty great message and I'm really excited for this event that's happening." –Sarah Takhar