Millennium Peace Summit

Several sources suggested that the GCP make a prediction for the Millenium Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. The first was by Murali Dhar, who sent an email on Tue, 20 Jun 2000.

     Subject: Re: PARTICIPATION IN G C P

     Dear MR. Roger Nelson

          BEST WISHES IN THE NAME OF GOD.........
     Please play special attention to the spirtual meet
     where about 100 religious heads are meeting on one
     platform coming from allover the world. Please make
     efforts to record the speeches of all the heads.They 
     have to be available on our web site.
     The International Spirtual Meet is begining on 28 th
     August at Newyork under the leadership of U N 
     Secretary  General Mr .Kofi Annan

     Murali Dhar

The suggestions for inclusion of the event have not been explicit, but we have a reasonable precedent in the Pope's visit to the Middle East. The events share an aspect of pilgrimage, and both occasions are clear statements of the integrated world we need to achieve. The formal analysis will follow the same criteria, presenting the whole period of time from the 28th to 31st August, and using a one-minute blocksize. In secondary analyses, particular events may be singled out.

The overall trend over the four days of the Summit does not show a strong positive trend, but instead a modest tendency to smaller deviations, culminating in a Chisquare of 5714.2 on 5760 degrees of freedom. This corresponds to a probability of about 0.6 (estimated -- Splus is down). The following figure shows the four days. Pairs of points on the horizontal expectation line show the beginning and end of the daytime periods when the delegates actually were meeting in plenary or special sessions.

World Peace Summit

While this analysis does not show the strong trends we have seen in other occasions of a similar nature, it is clear that the meetings were valuable and represented an essential gathering of forces that may help to ensure a viable future on the planet. The following descriptions by Sharon Franquemont give a bit of the flavor.

Each of you is familiar with U shaped General Assembly Hall.  Imagine saffron 
robes, Tibetan monk orange and cranberry, orange robes, Sufi hats, Sihk 
turbans, Muslim black robes, Catholic priests and cardinals with their red or 
magenta undergarments, the black hoods of the Greek Orthodox, Korean shamans 
with black peaked hats, beautiful Eagle bonnets of Native Americans, the 
colorful blue and red sacred clothes of the reindeer people of Northern 
Sweden, East Indian saris shimmering everywhere, white robes, purple robes of 
African priests, the large high, white bonnets of the Russian orthodox 
church, the gray robes of Japanese shinto prients, the painted robes of 
African shamans, feather headresses from Brazil and Central America, Anglican 
collars, and many other pleasures greeting your eyes wherevery you looked 
in the Hall.  It was extraordinary. 
...
Oren Lyons called for all the Indigenous to stand together as he spoke.  
The 87 year old elder with his Eagle bonnet, Joe Medicine, had been wanting 
to welcome the people to Turtle Island at every venue, finally got a chance.  
He sang a beautiful welcoming song.  Then Oren spoke the most moving words 
about the importance of our time, followed by an Eskimo, Angaangaq Lyberth, 
from Greenland saying, "About 10 years ago now, one of my people came back 
to our village and reported a strange phenomenon.  'There is a trickle of 
water coming down the glacier.  I think that the ice is melting.'"  Today 
that trickle is a stream of water. So I say to you, while we sit here talking, 
and making commitments to peace, remember the ice is melting.....the ice is 
melting.  But this ice is easy to melt compared to the ice in the human 
heart, so I am going to sing a song for that, a song to melt the ice of 
the human heart."  Standing there in clothing made from 3 different types 
of seal skins and a simple leather string around his forehead, he took out 
a large seal skin drum and began to play a haunting and deep call to inner 
integrity.  When he finished, he whispered once again, "Remember the ice 
is metling."  After a moment of stunned silence, those who had listened 
to this remarkable presentation with 65 Indigenous people standing in 
support behind them broke into thunderous clapping again.  Later, when I 
walked with Oren to the bus, a saffron-colored robed monk came to Oren and 
said, "You (meaning all of the people) have been Moses for this gathering; 
you have parted the seas and left us a path to a more beautiful future."

The Indigenous people's message became like water for a humanity dying of 
thirst.  Their panel today was standing room only with crowds being turned 
down at the door for over an hour.  The Amazon from Brazil told of his 
training, did the healing song and dance for inner pain, and set out a sound 
from his mouth like one can only imagine being a bird or other creature in 
the jungle.  The Ecuadorian shaman sang the song of a river and his mouth, 
too, recreated the sound of every river I have ever stood beside including 
the fish as they are jumping, the various birds, the wind, the many different 
water currents, and then he sang the song for healthy water....The Mayan 
elder presented a talk that one person told me was worth the whole four days 
alone....Etc. Etc. Etc.  Jane Goodall sat in the back the entire time (we went 
over an hour because each Indigenous delegation had a message to give) and 
had it filmed.

It was/is extraordinary.....

GCP Home