Will Walk for Peace

The university where I teach has a Peace collection on the second floor of the library.  Since the special collections room doubles as a writing center, I tend to hang out there quite a bit.  About four months ago, I was scanning the stacks and happened to notice a small hardback called Peace Pilgrim.  Intrigued by the title, I checked the book out and read it over the next several weeks.  The more I read and reflected on the book's message, the more my initial curiosity and mild interest in the book and its subject grew.  I recommended it to my wife, who also found it very interesting, and the book has become a favorite topic of discussion between us.  Once in awhile, I read a book that affects me so strongly that I want to inflict it on all my friends.  Peace Pilgrim is such a book.  The book was published in 1991, and I'm pretty sure it's no longer in print.  All the more reason to share some of its wisdom.

As its title implies, this book is the story of a pilgrim for peace.  After 15 years of preparation, this woman began her first cross country pilgrimage in 1953 from Pasadena, Calfornia. So devoted was she to the cause of peace that she rejected her legal name and took the name Peace Pilgrim.  The compilers of the book honoring her describe her pilgrimages:

"Peace Pilgrim walked alone and penniless and with no orgnaizational backing. She walked 'as a prayer' and as a chance to inspire others to pray and work for peace. She wore navy blue shirt and slacks, and a short tunic with pockets all around the bottom in which she carried her only worldly possessions: a comb, a folding toothbrush, a ballpoint pen, copies of her message and her current correspondence."

And she kept it up.  This was no one-time, publicity seeking event.  By 1964, she had completed 25,000 miles on foot for peace.  She vowed "to remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace," and she was faithful to her promise.  Before her death, in 1981, she would walk in all 50 states and complete seven cross-country pilgrimages. 

Peace Pilgrim talked with thousands of people on her journeys and was often interviewed on radio and TV. Wherever she went she carried a comprehensive message of peace: in her words, "peace among nations, peace among groups, peace within our environment, peace among individuals, and the very, very important inner peace--which I talk about most often because that is where peace begins."

Peace Pilgrim never wrote a book; her pilgrimages were her message.  But after her death, friends compiled many of her words from various sources, and these are clearly the most powerful ones in the book.  Here are some of the words that stood out to me:

On inner peace: " In the final analysis, only as we become more peaceful people will we be findng ourselves living in a more peaceful world."

On simplicity: "In the middle ages the pilgrims went out as the disciples were sent out--without money, without food, without adequate clothing--and I know that tradition. I have no money. I do not accept any money on my pilgrimage. I belong to no organization. I own only what I wear and carry. There is nothing to tie me down. I am as free as a bird soaring in the sky."

On faith and goodness:  "I walk until given shelter, fast until given food. I don't ask--it's given without asking. Aren't people good! There is a spark of good in everybody, no matter how deeply it may be buried, it is there. I call it the God-centered nature or the divine nature. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God within."

On her central message:  "This is the way of peace--overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."

On the practice of peace: "Please don't say lightly that these are just religious concepts and not practical. These are laws governing human conduct, which apply as rigidly as the laws of gravity. When we disregard these laws in any walk of life, chaos results. Through obedience to these laws this world of ours will enter a period of peace and richness of life beyond our fondest dreams. The key word for our time is practice. We have all the light we need; we just need to put it into practice."

Peace's words are simple, but they sound wise to me.  Their simplicity is not a simplicity of naivete but a simplicity that reminds me most often of the words of one of the prophets or Jesus.  I wonder why I've never heard of her until now.  If someone believes so strongly in her message that she sells all that she has and spends her life on a pilgrimage to share it, something tells me I should at least give her a hearing.

Of course, I know there's all sorts of reasons I've never heard of her.  Personally, I grew up in a religious tradition (and a part of the country) that pretty much discounted the idea of peace as impractical.  Those who took seriously the possibility of a world without conflict and war were viewed as naive at best and un-American at worst.  Today I often wonder how we reconciled these attitudes with our Christian faith. I'm sure we read Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount and his admonition to Peter to put away his sword, but somehow it never occurred to us to apply those words in "real life."

Here's a sobering thought:  In the 1970s Peace Pilgrim believed we had entered a crisis period in human history "walking the brink between a nuclear war of annihilation and a golden age of peace." Some 30 years later, how much has changed?

Reading about Peace Pilgrim has done more than make me question my years of unthinking acceptance of the inevitability of war.  Reading her philosophies of inner peace, simplicity, and living to give have caused me to reevaluate many aspects of my theory and practice.  There's too much to say, and maybe this merits another blog, but for now just let me say this:  I've studied the ways of war, the ways of materialism, and the ways of selfishness for much too long.  From now on, I intend to learn the way of peace.  With God's help, I want to overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.