Peace Doves 2025

I wonder what peace looks like to you ...

Is it an end to the violence and war we see that blights our world? That was a common theme in the prayers and messages of peace that thousands of schoolchildren, visitors, worshippers, staff, volunteers and community groups have written on their peace doves.

For one of the Ukrainian dancers coming to perform under the Peace Doves in June, it was deeply moving to see the doves piling up in the basket at the back of the nave with so many heartfelt prayers for her home country.

“The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions,” according to Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. Peace is something many of us long for in our world and in our lives but I suggest it is more verb than noun. It is something active, something we need to work at constantly as human beings especially in areas where we encounter difference.

While most of us would agree this is vital, I’m not sure how many of us would have considered it an artistic endeavour. Peter Walker’s beautiful installation of Peace Doves shows that it can be, as have the many people who have contributed creatively to the messages of peace carried by the flock of doves soon to be suspended in the Cathedral’s south transept.

I hope that peace as practice is something reflected in the programme of events and activities being held under the Peace Doves too. We will be holding mindfulness sessions each Monday at midday, celebrating International Nurses Day and the work of the hospital chaplaincy.

As we mark the 80^th anniversary of Christian Aid week, we will be reflecting with Chine McDonald on the Church’s role in polarised times and looking back on five years since George Floyd’s murder and the ongoing struggle for racial justice.

In a more artistic vein, through poetry and music representing diverse cultures and traditions, we will express our hopes for peace. We will welcome renowned poet Imtiaz Dharker and a group of talented British Asian musicians to perform Classical Indian music for the first time in the Cathedral.

In June, we will mark Refugee Week and as a Cathedral of Sanctuary we are delighted to be hosting Wings of the Sky, a new musical production by Matt Baker, as well as a performance by a Ukrainian dance group.

If peace is a verb and not a noun, my hope is that across our diverse community we will make the effort to engage with both the comfort and the challenge that Peace Doves offers us. The prayer written for this installation echoes that hope, recognising the needs of those seeking peace in sanctuary, challenging all of us to consider how we might become agents of peace, and looking forwards to a future in which we and the whole of creation are finally reconciled to one another and to God. 

Gracious God, 

under whose wings there is sanctuary for all, 

and whose Son Jesus promised peace beyond our imagining, 

form us into agents of peace in our communities, 

reconcile peoples and planet, 

and breathe your deep and lasting peace into our hearts and lives. Amen.