Urrez, Spain

report by Asun Serna

On Sunday, May 23, we celebrated the Symphony of Peace Prayers in a natural environment in the village of Urrez, near Burgos. Many people of various nationalities joined in the event, some of whom live quite far away.

We celebrated the SOPP near a small hermitage, at the foot of the first Peace Pole we planted in Spain. We were 30 people, many more than expected. This year we didn’t invite many people, as we did in previous years. We wanted to respect the people of Urrez, who have strictly maintained the measures imposed by the pandemic situation. Because of the pandemic they have not even celebrated the traditional holidays here.

Many years ago we created a flag for each continent. We called this project “Unity in Diversity.” For each continent, the flag has a different color—blue for Asia, purple for the Americas, orange for Europe, yellow for Oceania, and green for Africa. At the beginning of the event we presented all those flags, explaining the deep meaning of this peace ceremony in sending out waves of peace for each country in the world.

For each continent we offered a mantra, a song, or a prayer from a different spiritual tradition, while participants waved the flags of the continents. This year, the rhythm of the celebration was very light and simple, inspired by the Fuji Sanctuary SOPP.