Dawn. We begin our trek to merge ourselves with the thousands of other cars converging on the tunnels and bridges that lead into New York. It is the eve of the big march, but already a week before peace pilgrims from all over the country began pouring into the core of the Big Apple to reserve front-row seats for the largest political demonstration in U.S. history.
8 a.m. On the road two hours, we stop at a phone booth along 1-95 so that I can call home to the community. I'm told that "labor is definitely starting."
"What?" I'm trying to hear over the roar of the interstate's parade of 18-wheelers. I tell everyone in the car that labor is definitely starting, and we're on the road again.
12 noon. St. John the Divine Cathedral is packed, and the only seat for us is a marble ledge in a niche practically out the back door of the church. As the religious convocation begins, I run out on to the street after a phone booth. With a desperation that perhaps only Superman can appreciate, I finally spot one three blocks away.
"The contractions are coming more regularly."
"What?" I'm trying to hear over the roar of the crowds and the taxicabs on 109th Street. A reporter steps behind me, glances at his watch, and asks impatiently, "Are you going to be long? I have a story to call in with a deadline to meet."
Soon another man joins what could now be called a line waiting for the phone. He glances at his watch, and asks the man in front of him, "Is she going to be long?"
12:20 p.m. Back at the cathedral, the word gets whispered down the marble ledge that the contractions are coming more regularly. Prayers and offerings from the platform echo through the massive cathedral in celebration of the service's chosen theme: "Choose Life." From the book of Deuteronomy, the choice before us is clear: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live."
A Cambodian boy shares painfully about the horrors of war that have claimed his family. An American boy talks of his father's death from leukemia following years of work around nuclear radiation. They are children grown up by the suffering they have known. I am here for them, for children everywhere, for one that is struggling this moment to come into life. I send up a quick prayer for the new life that is about to be.
6 p.m. We are at Trinity Lutheran Church, where we are sojourning for the night. The midwives have arrived, and a birth in Washington is "imminent."
10 p.m. I'm standing at a phone booth in front of the Blazing Salads Restaurant in Greenwich Village, where I've just had a vegetarian dinner with an old friend from seminary. "The prediction is midnight."
"What?" I'm trying to hear over the noise of a three-piece rock band in Washington Square and the subway that's rumbling under my feet. My friend and I catch the last act of the jugglers in the square and head back uptown so that I can wait by the phone.
Midnight. I'm back at the church and pacing. No phone call.
2 a.m. Just three hours short of a full day awake, I stretch out on the floor of the church office by the phone.
6:08 a.m. The phone rings. "It's a girl." Kathryn Claire has been born to Jackie and Bob Sabath, two pastors of Sojourners Fellowship. I spread the news among the community folk already lined up for use of the church's one bathroom, then go upstairs to announce it to those spread out in sleeping bags all over the sanctuary.
7 a.m. Cheerios in paper cups for breakfast, and we've got to get moving downtown to meet up with the march.
10:15 a.m. We're lined up on 48th Street with the religious contingent, tucked ecumenically between a Mennonite family and a Franciscan community; the front of the march moves forward. Gatherings of union organizers, women's and Third World groups are before and after us. A children's contingent leads us with wagons and balloons.
While we wait for our turn to move, friends from all over emerge from the crowd: old acquaintances, guests who have visited Sojourners, magazine readers who spy our banner hoisted up on two umbrellas. Friends from communities all over the country are there, from the Bruderhof in upstate New York, Jubilee Fellowship in Philadelphia, Jubilee Partners in Georgia.
Members of a Japanese delegation, some from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shower the crowd with chains of paper cranes, colorful, intricate peace offerings. A people our country has deeply wronged, they remind us of the power of forgiveness.
12:45 p.m. Two and a half hours into the march, we finally begin to move. Two-thirds of the crowd is still behind us. Helicopters circle overhead with crowd estimates, and a police communication worries if we'll all get to Central Park before dark. The rally there has already begun.
As we turn the corner by the U.N. building and march up Seventh Avenue, banners of support hang from the windows of office buildings, apartments, restaurants. Signs are everywhere. A little girl holds one that says, "Arms are for hugging," and a grandmother, "I'm too young to die." Groups identify themselves and their commitment: "Benedictines for Peace," "North Carolinians for a Nuclear Freeze," "Corporate Lawyers for Disarmament," "Judy and Paul for a Nuclear-Free World."
The massive stream of people slowly winds its way through the city that has been conquered for a day by peace. As we finally push our way into Central Park after four in the afternoon, the feeling is one of exhilaration and exhaustion. As the religious contingent enters, the waiting crowd cheers and greets us with a booming rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In."
Among three-quarter of a million faces, I see only familiar ones. Some belong to old friends, but most are familiar the way the faces in a Norman Rockwell painting are. We are an American portrait, old and young, mainstream and marginal, on the streets from every part of society. The peace movement has hit the heart of America.
Bone-weary from a short night and a long walk on city sidewalks, I finally rest in the shade of a Central Park oak, serenaded by the golden voice of Joan Baez. I think of last night's long, hard hours of pain and waiting at home, and the rest that must have by now descended over the household.
Hope is found in massive outpourings and tiny, newborn cries. Both are deep affirmations of life. The connection between our life together as a community and our ministry for justice and peace has never been so clear.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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