On September 19, 2000, I had the honor of playing my Peace Gong at the Millennium Peace Day celebration at the United Nations. It was 72 hours that changed the world as each child from 188 countries sat in the seats of the regular adult delegates and honored the children of the past, present and future. It was a day of peace scrolls, Cloth of Many Colors project, singing dancing and celebration. It was one of the highlights of my life.

On September 8, 2001 saw my only child Douglas marry one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen; both inside and out. They went to New Orleans for their honeymoon and were there on September 11th, 2001. That too was to be a day that changed the world forever. The United Nations event was a blending, a melding, a uniting of all of the countries in the world including Afghanistan and Iraq through the children of those countries. It was a day in time that showed the world one option involving respect, patience, tolerance, joy, and most assuredly love. It was my ideal of a peaceful world where the children came before politics or politicians or governments or greed. It was a day for the heart and soul of the world. I hold that vision now in my heart and mind as my ideal, for all of mankind. The constant killing over land and who owns it and who will live on it is a true abomination of all peoples of earth. We have filled the oceans with our own tears from man's inhumanity to mankind. How arrogant of us to divide up through war and greed our God-given Mother Earth.

I was born on August 8th during WWII in between two nuclear explosions on the 7th and 9Th of August. I am 62 years old now and my entire life has been lived with the threat of total annihilation from one foe or another. The people I have met in my life have only wanted peace and the right to make a decent living through hard work. Yet governments and politicians have pretty much given America away and the back street politics and deals we don't know about I am sure would truly bring us all to full revolution. We now bomb rocks and stones in distance lands while terror holds us now truly for the first time waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is time for each person to hold and maintain a clear vision of their ideal world. Our God-given ability to create our own reality is upon us. Whatever we believe in our hearts as true, will be our lasting reality.

I hold in holy high esteem all those who died on September 11, 2001 and all those who died before and after that we might someday come to this day to finally decide that America is the melting pot of the world. A microcosm of all the countries here on this hallowed ground. We the people actually represent the entire world here in America. It is up to us to lead our original lands with our ancestors bones interred into a new era of light. We can raise our vibration through song and music and prayer and meditation to new heights and become the spiritual leaders of earth now. It is really why we are here now, isn't it? The time is finally here. It is now. Choose Peace Now.

Don Orne (Gongmaster for Peace)