Since October 15, 2002, a silent vigil for peace has taken place each week on the West Lawn of the US Capitol. Started by Quakers, this vigil is not a protest, nor a march, but a non-partisan, ecumenical silent vigil, under the simple banner, "Seek Peace and Pursue It", a quote from Psalms 34.
 
A Silent Vigil for Peace.The vigil takes place on Saturdays at noon. Bring no signs or banners, just yourself and your hopes and prayers for peace.

Saturdays at Noon—One Hour silent vigil for Peace

U.S. Capitol, West Lawn

Our silent gathering is a witness to our concern for peace in Iraq, its neighbors, the Middle East, and around the world. 

Our silent vigil and witness for peace and nonviolence was started by a Quaker from the Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean, Virginia but we come from many religions and beliefs. 

Our message is a positive one.  We are encouraging the Congress and the nation to seek peace and build peace.  We believe that a reverence for life should guide our nation’s actions, and that our country’s great strength should further the ideal of an international community based on respect and law. 

We see many positive opportunities for diplomacy, trade, aid, multilateral organization building and military restraint that will sow the seeds of peace rather than plant the seeds of war. 

Our vigil takes place every Saturday at noon for one hour on or near the West lawn of the U.S. Capitol.  All who are seeking peace are welcome to join us in silence for our time here.  As is our custom we stand with our only banner with the quote from Psalms 34:14, “Seek peace and pursue it.” 

During our time here we are grateful for the support of our fellow citizens and foreign visitors who are also seeking peace in their own way.  In our silence we are praying for all those affected by war, service people and civilians. 

If you would like to join us for only a minute, or for the entire hour, that would be most welcome.  Together we can hold your loved ones and the concern for peace in The Light.  We welcome all peace-seekers, of any belief, race, or nationality, to gather with us in this silent witness.

For more information about the vigil, or to be on our list serve:  garvey73@erols.com

                “We have grasped the mystery of the atom, and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

---General Omar Bradley

            “No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.”

---Croesus, King of Lydia, in Herodotus’ The Persian Wars

            “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends.  You talk to your enemies.”

---Moshe Dayan

            “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it.”

---Eleanor Roosevelt

            “Very few people chose war.  They chose selfishness and the result was war.  Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose:  total love, or total war.”

---David Dellinger

            “Ever gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

---Dwight Eisenhower

            “I hope…that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.”

---Benjamin Franklin

            “I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”

---Helen Keller

            “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

---Martin Luther King, Jr.

            “We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace.  War is not an accident.  It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.  If we want to attack war, we have to attack the way of life.”

---A.J. Muste

            “We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.  There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.”

---Albert Einstein

            “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

---Nelson Mandela