Runners participating in an international torch relay recently passed through Coos Bay, along a 10,000 mile route that loops around the United States and into parts of Canada.
The group of women runners each come from a different country. They are united in a mission to bring more peace to the world through the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run.
“Since I was a child, I always wanted to do something for humanity,” said Harita Davies.
Davies took part in the Peace Run for the first time in New Zealand.
“I really loved the combination of running and being out in nature doing something for peace,” she said.
The New Zealander said she was also attracted to the unifying message.
“The message is so simple and so at the heart of each one of us. It's really something that everybody can identify with,” Davies said.
The Peace Run was inspired by visionary Sri Chinmoy to give citizens a dynamic way to express their own hopes and dreams for a more harmonious world. An athlete, philosopher, artist, musician and poet, Sri Chinmoy dedicated his life to advancing the ideals of world harmony.
Chinmoy said: "How can we have peace? Not by talking about peace, but by walking along the road of peace."
For more than 35 years, the International Peace Run has traversed across 160 nations throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia as a symbol of humanity’s universal aspiration for a more peaceful world.
The first team of runners in the current Peace Run left New York City in April. The continuous relay will also run through three provinces of Canada over a 4-month journey. Runners are scheduled to arrive back in New York in mid-August.
There is also a European Peace Run happening. It started in Portugal in March and will conclude in Hungary in October.
The group of Peace Runners participating in the stretch through Coos Bay and other parts of Oregon included women from New Zealand, Slovakia, Romania, Bangladesh and Mongolia.
As they ran through Coos Bay, they said they were passing the peace torch from hand-to-hand, heart-to-heart, and community-to-community.
“We kindly ask everyone who touches it to say a wish or prayer for peace that they want to see happen, and then we symbolically carry it around the world,” one of the runners said.
The international peace runners want to give everyone that sees them a moment to reflect on a yearning for peace that they have in their hearts.
“This gives everyone an encouraging moment to remember that we can all do something and that we all make a difference. There's so many ways that we can make the world more peaceful. But it has to start inside our own hearts, inside ourselves and in our communities,” peace-runner Davies said.
More than 7-million people have participated in Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run since it’s beginning in 1987.
Commendations have come from many world figures including Pope Francis (who lit the Peace Torch in March at the Vatican), President Nelson Mandela, President Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, Olympians, state governors, city mayors and celebrities across the world.
Carl Lewis, 9-time Olympic Gold-medalist, said: "By carrying the Torch, you will be bridging cultural and social barriers, and all the boundaries that separate nation from nation. You will be the living proof of the ancient vision of having a beautiful and harmonious world."
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