A Stonemason’s Peace Project
I am Kristian Lund, a working-class man from Sweden.
From 1972 to ’73 I worked as a volunteer for a large forest company in southern Chile. I was deeply involved in the Chilean people’s fight for better rights. When the military coup occurred on September 11, 1973, I was arrested and tortured and sat in a Chilean prison for two months. I was then declared persona non grata (unwelcome) and deported. I was scared, but that did not stop me from continuing to be committed to peace and justice in the world.
In 1976 I joined RC, which became my salvation. I began to discharge and understand things and connections that I did not understand before.
I’ve heard it said that all big events start with someone coming up with [thinking of] a good idea. I thought, why not me? Dan Nickerson [the RC International Liberation Reference Person for Working-Class People] said that we from the working class know best what needs to be done to create a good society but that we must learn to speak loudly and free ourselves from internalized oppression.
I have been to several RC Healing from War Workshops in Poland and have understood that I am neither better nor worse than any other human being. It was at such a workshop in Poland that I got my idea for the project the Hundred Stones. I am a stonemason. I decided to carve “No more wars” in different languages on round stones—one indestructible stone for each language. I now have over a hundred stones placed in an exhibition in southern Sweden. I have had to break my isolation and engage other people in order to get more languages. One of my goals is to get these stones placed in the United Nations as a reminder. Another goal is to further my own liberation, to get through my powerlessness and isolation and make a better world.
We must change this world together.
Falun, Sweden
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of wide world change
(Present Time 203, April 2021)