Day 12 - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God
- Congregational Federation
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Urdd Gobaith Cymru is one of those phrases that doesn’t translate easily into English. And yet everyone in Wales will know exactly what it is, whatever language they speak. It’s the Welsh youth movement that was formed in 1922. It has over 55,000 members between the ages of 8 and 25, supports 200 apprentices and is supported by 10,000 volunteers. Since 1929 it has held an annual Eisteddfod: this year’s festival on Ynys Môn, will welcome 100,000 visitors during the Spring Bank Holiday week. It has four residential camps. The first opened in Llangrannog in 1932 and my mother was among the first volunteer helpers. Others followed in Glan Llyn on Llyn Tegid, near Bala, in Cardiff bay as part of the Millennium Centre complex, and most recently in Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire where an Environmental and Well-being Residential Centre was opened in 2023.
In those early years after the end of the first world war, there was a passion for peace-making in the air. The Welsh League of Nations Union had been formed to foster international work for peace. There was a frustration, however, that one of the architects of the League of Nations had refused to join. The Women’s Committee of the WLNU decided that something had to be done about it. In 1923 they set about raising a petition asking the women of the United States of America to persuade their government to join the League of Nations. Groups of women went from door to door in every locality in Wales and gathered the signatures of 390,296 women in Wales. Led by their chair, Annie Hughes Griffiths, a group took the chest containing the signatures to the States and toured the country, winning an audience with the President, though sadly America never did join the League of Nations. The chest was kept in the Smithsonian Institute and forgotten about until it was re-discovered and returned to Wales in 2023. Since then the petition is being digitised.
The work for peace is at the heart of Urdd Gobaith Cymru. In 1922, a Message of Peace and Goodwill was put together enabling the young people of Wales to share a vision of peace with the young people of the world. Another followed the next year, and the 1924 message was broadcast on the BBC World Service, and has been broadcast annually ever since. As the message is shared each year, so messages come back to Wales from all parts of the world.
For many years now the message has been shared on 18 May, the anniversary of the first international peace gathering in the Hague in 1899. On this St David’s Day, let me share the Peace Message that went with the centenary celebrations of the Women’s Peace Appeal. It was created at a two-day workshop in the Urdd Centre in Cardiff by members of the Urdd, all of whom were young women, under the direction of Elan Evans and the poet and singer, Casi Wyn. Efa Blosse-Mason created the animation for the video.
A chestful
of signatures,
and a century of defining
a landscape of peace.
But does peace
stand a chance today?
We catch a glimpse,
somewhere
between the discourse
and the dust,
in the bright eyes
of the child
who traces the arc of a kite
across fresh acres of sky.
For hope is an action
to live in unison,
to nourish the seeds of goodwill
in each and every heart.
But does peace
stand a chance today?
Yes,
in the love that inhabits
the harmony of our song -
and in the challenge
of our century’s next chapter.
A Prayer
Make us people of hope,
prepared to act together as we sow the seeds of goodwill,
in our commitment to be peacemakers. Amen
And for those who want a translation.
Urdd: association, guild
Gobaith: hope
Cymru: the name of the nation, essentially meaning ‘friends together’. Wales, on the other hand, is a Germanic word meaning ‘foreigner’ and is sometimes used pejoratively by English speakers as in the verb ‘to welsh’ on someone.
Ynys Môn is the Celtic name that predates the Roman conquest of AD 43–83 for the island that is also known by its Viking name of Anglesey.
Richard Cleaves
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