Maya the Peace Clown came into being on Halloween 2007. I moved to Mill Valley July 1st, 2007.
This small community felt like my new home right away and I got the
idea to hold a peace dance with peace songs from the 60’s to
now. Being a babyboomer
and a dancer I had always wanted to hold such an event, but finally
the inspiration was ready to
manifest. This peace dance was held at the community church in Mill
Valley on Sept. 21st (the U.N.'s Intl. Peace Day), and it turned out to be the first of my annual peace week
events to coincide with international peace week. Then I woke up Halloween morning
feeling a desire to dress up ( I love to dress up at Halloween!) and
go around sharing the peace and joy I felt inside of me. I had a clown
costume from a previous Halloween, and the idea came to me to become
Maya the Peace Clown. I
created my "prescription for inner peace" and went around downtown
Mill Valley with my basket of candy and my "prescription" on a
small piece of paper.
In September 2008, for Peace Week I asked
Austin DeLone and his band to sing 2 peace songs at the yearly Mill
Valley block party. I
again dressed up as Maya the Peace Clown, handed out the lyrics to
the songs, and stood on stage encouraging the audience to
sing-along!
In 2009, during Peace week, I taught an Embodying Peace
class based on the wonderful ebook by Paul Linden called "Embodying
Peacefulness". Maya
Durie |
