450 PRAY TOGETHER FOR PEACE

EARLY MORNING EVENT DRAWS DIVERSE CROWD

Just before dawn yesterday, about 450 people of different ages, races and creeds came together to meditate and talk about peace in 1987.

They were participating in a World Peace Celebration, which was designed to spread a "positive energy force" across the planet and which drew upwards of 20,000 people in gatherings scattered across the United States.

Planners of the worldwide event hoped that during the same hour, 500 million people from several nations would join together to express their desire for peace. In Washington, the time was 6:45 a.m.; the place the Washington Hilton ballroom.

Diverse heads bowed yesterday. A young woman bent hers, gently kissing the child she held to her chest. A gray-haired man prayed alongside a younger fellow with a pony-tail. Young adults in ski jackets sat near a turbaned Sikh. A Buddhist monk in orange, and a Catholic one in gray, both led prayers. Some of the more limber listeners sat erect with their legs crossed in the yoga lotus position.

All who came were led in the "Spiritual Defense Initiative," a meditation practice that was in use simultaneously by a group of 14 employes on duty at the Pentagon, according to their leader, Ed Winchester.

Winchester, an official in the Pentagon's accounting policy office, said that he derived the initiative, or "Peace Shield" last year, while meditating in a designated quiet room at the Pentagon. The purpose of the shield is to improve the world through prayer and positive thinking, he said.

"Take your attention to the heart center of your being," said the Rev. Noel McInnis, leading the service at the Hilton. He then instructed the participants to think "I am," as they inhaled and "at peace" as they exhaled.

McInnis urged the group to use a few minutes to breathe deeply and to reflect on the name of the divinity most effective for each.

Prem Debem, a Sufi mystic from the Devadeep Rajneesh Meditation Center, prayed for the full flowering of the divine presence in all people, while Ellen Dietschold, a Brahma Kumaris leader, said, "Let the soul recognize God the father, the ocean of love, and let their beings experience swimming in the ocean of love and peace forever."

Mary Edwards, a Washington native who recently completed the Great Peace March from California, said the hardest part of the march was learning to share views and backgrounds with fellow marchers. "Sometimes we really wondered if we were all from the same planet."

Toward the end of the ceremony, children walked to the stage to light candles symbolizing the 159 members of the United Nations. Then a lively mix of people -- old and young, and of all colors -- climbed on the stage to hold hands and sing a song for peace.

Afterward, Tom Hammang and Sharon Goodspeed, a young couple visiting from Connecticut, said they felt enriched by the program. "We wanted to come together in hearts and minds with all those brothers and sisters, and to end the old year holding hands like this," Goodspeed said.

Sister Cleeretta Smiley, head of the I Am That I Am Circle of Almighty God, said that she came in search of new recruits. Smiley described her circle as "a group of people that are about light, love and peace, and strengthening families," and said she thought that the peace celebration would attract the kind of people needed for her ranks.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.