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'Peace troubadour' brings his message this weekend
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- James Twyman believes his mission is to spread a message of peace to the world. This weekend will be St. Petersburg's turn. Twyman, 39, who once studied to become a Franciscan priest, has since chosen the path of peace troubadour and metaphysical author. Friday he will launch the Peace-Full Weekend at First Unity Church, 469 45th Ave. N. The three-day event will include a concert, workshop and a blessing ceremony with a portion of his Cloth of Many Colors, a peace quilt to which people from around the world have contributed. "It's the only thing I do well," Twyman said of his work for peace. "I have a theory that you teach what you most want to learn." During a telephone interview from his home in Joshua Tree, Calif., Twyman said he began his mission in 1994. "A friend gave me a sheet of paper that had the peace prayers of 12 major religions and it was when I read those peace prayers that I experienced a bit of a miracle," he said. "As I read them, I heard music as if it were being played in another room. I wasn't sure whether the music was coming from the inside or outside of me, but I picked up my guitar and played along. Within an hour, all 12 peace prayers had been arranged to music. I had never experienced anything like that before, but I knew it was going to change my life. So I began traveling around the world as the peace troubadour." His 1995 stop in Bosnia led to Emissary of Light: A Vision of Peace, a book in which he tells of his encounter with an ancient society of spiritual masters. "They were living in a very secluded place in the mountains and they did a very deep and esoteric form of meditation that took them 12 hours every day. These were ordinary men and women who were drawn together for an extraordinary reason," Twyman said of the group whose teaching he says goes back 2,000 years. "Nobody really knew if they were real or just a myth. I was brought to them because they wanted to give a message to the world," he said. The message was "To tell people that we're ready to create a new world based upon compassion and love rather than competition and war," Twyman said. "That we have the light within us to do that now." Some people think his is "a pretty fantastic story," Twyman said. "What I do hope is that people will believe the message," he said. Despite his mystical experiences, Twyman, divorced and the father of a 15-year-old daughter, describes himself as quite ordinary. "I believe that it is by realizing how ordinary we all are that we enter into the deepest mystical experiences," he said. The peace activist said he has proof that his peace prayers work. "There are quite a few instances when I would be in a country like Israel, when we invite a network of people from around the world, sometimes millions of people, to be praying peace at the same time I am performing a concert. We've done this five or six times and each time miracles have happened that have shown us the power of this prayer," he said. On the eve of his visit to St. Petersburg, during which a 450-foot portion of his Cloth of Many Colors will be wrapped around First Unity Church, Twyman is making no promises. "I never come to a place with concrete goals," he said. "I just come to share. I let whatever needs to happen, happen." If you goA Peace-Full Weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, First Unity Church, 469 45th Ave. N, (727) 527-2222. Blessing ceremony with the Cloth of Many Colors, 6 p.m. Friday. Free. James Twyman Peace Concert, 7 p.m. Friday, $15 adults, $7.50 ages 12 to 17. Dances of Universal Peace led by Tamara Short of Clearwater, 9 p.m. Friday. Love offering. Drumming Circle, 10 p.m. Friday. Free. Lock in Peace, grades 6-8, Friday night, followed by Peace Workshop, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Fee, $20, includes Friday night concert. Reel Spirit Film Series, featuring the movie Gandhi, 2:15 p.m., Saturday, followed by a discussion with James Twyman. Love offering. Special music by James Twyman during First Unity's services, 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. Sunday. Workshop with James Twyman, "Becoming a New Emissary of Light," 2 p.m. Sunday. Registration, $20.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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