On Saturday, Aug. 4, Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks invites the community to come together for the 8th annual Peace Fair, to be held on the Brunswick Mall from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The fair is a family-friendly event full of art, activities, music, workshops, and conversations — both informal and facilitated — reflecting on how we might build a more peaceful world. Thirty nonprofits from around the state, including groups working locally, nationally and globally on a wide variety of issues, will be present to share their visions as well as their ideas on how you can get involved.

It has been my pleasure to work with a wonderful group of women coordinating this year’s fair, and I’m equally delighted to take this moment to reflect on what this idea of “peace” means to me, and how the fair embodies and expresses it in all of its dimensions.

Peace. The word has been overused to the point of being rendered meaningless. It has been equated with passivity, with wimpiness or hopeless idealism. It’s been mischaracterized as a lack of conflict, perhaps as a repression of it. At worst, it’s become a commodity to buy or sell; a bumper sticker or Tshirt. But what does it really mean to live and work toward peace?

Peace is empowering. When we live our lives from a place of inner peace, we act with confidence and are less swayed by our own fears and the fears of others. When we know how to handle conflict internally, we are better equipped to handle it in our communities. We can align ourselves with what Wendell Berry calls “the peace of wild things,” and gain a better understanding of what exactly the planet needs from us.

With activities like a walking meditation led by Open Heart Sangha and a workshop in paper crane folding, as well as tables representing a number of local churches and spiritual groups, the Peace Fair invites us all to turn inward and find that still center within that gives us the strength and the confidence to act from a place of love.

And peace is an action; often a contrary one, despite popular views of pacifism. It is a voice that speaks, despite fear, in support of what it knows is right and against a world seemingly bent on destroying itself.

Peace is saying no to endless war and corporate ownership of the common good. No to wanton destruction of our ecosystem. It says no to hate and mistrust and ignorance, and no to fabricated scarcity in a world that provides enough for everyone.

But it also says yes. Yes to community gardens and social justice work. Yes to communication and fair exchange. Yes to helping out your neighbors.

In short, peace says no to everything that is against life and a resounding YES to those things that support it. Peace has a voice, and its speaks out clearly, with passion and conviction.

There will be many such voices at this year’s fair, tackling issues as diverse as military spending (Bring Our War Dollars Home and Veterans for Peace, among others), corporate water extraction (Food and Water Watch), industrial wind development (Friends of the Highland Mountains), broken correctional systems (Restorative Justice), and food justice and global inequality (Bread for the World, Heifer International, and others).

Want to add your voice to the chorus?

At 1 p.m., Occupy Maine — Bath, Brunswick will be facilitating a community conversation about “Connecting the Dots” between all of these interrelated issues.

Peace is also a process, not a thing you can buy or sell or even wish into being. It is not something we can simply ask the government to provide us, but something we have to actively create, moment by moment. And that takes work.

That work takes many forms — it can be educating oneself and others in Peace Studies (made accessible through the UMaine system and through our annual communityfunded Peace Studies Scholarship), collectively visioning our goals (such as a group of students will help us do in the 11 a.m. conversation, “What Will a Sustainable World Look Like”), as well as doing the nitty-gritty work of turning those visions into reality.

A number of groups presenting at the fair are doing just that. Whether one is creating a safe space where people can come together regardless of economic background (as The Gathering Place does), a sustainable food system in a war-ravaged community in Africa (like Working Villages International), or space for alternative visions within a polarized political system (like the Maine Green Independent Party), a key part of pursuing peace is actively creating alternatives to a violent world. It can be messy, and it can take time. But it can also be a lot of fun. Because peace should be, above all, a celebration of community creativity.

With activities like a children’s musical parade at 10:30 a.m., an interactive ArtVan project from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., a poetry writing workshop at 2 p.m., and a clothesline project where you can design a poster that “Speaks Out Clearly” in your voice, there will be plenty of opportunities to get your creative juices flowing.

As Emma Goldman once wisely said, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” I couldn’t agree more. That’s why in addition to visual and literary art, fair-goers will be treated to the local musical talents of Lauryn Hottinger (Brunswick), Mike Patterson (Brunswick), Morgana-Warner Evans (Brunswick), BroadBand (Harpswell), Bald Hill (New Gloucester), and Denise Dill (Lewiston).

With opportunities to look within and reflect, to find your voice, to learn and to teach, to parade and dance and “make art not war,” the 8th annual Peace Fair will have something for everyone. We hope you will join us for this celebration of our community and everyone within it working for peace.

For more information, call 239-9679. A schedule of events can be found online at www.peaceworksbrunswickme.org.