A Peace Pilgrim, a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox, Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven, MA, May 27, 2007

This is Memorial Day weekend and one of the few times of the year when Leo and I fly our stars and stripes. I suppose most people treat it as the first unofficial weekend of the summer but I like to think that most are affected by the sad significance of this holiday. The Standard Times carefully listed and described the flow of events that are set to take place on Monday in Fairhaven, New Bedford, Dartmouth, and Freetown. I’m not sure if we’ll attend one but my heart will be there for sure.

In my growing up years in England many if not most people would be clustered around the television watching the laying of the wreath in London by the Queen and the parade of all the armed forces, including Americans, and most specifically the veterans of foreign wars. Wreath laying and parades take place locally as well but it is on a Sunday. It is impressive and awfully, awfully sad. Each year I ask myself the same question, “Will we always have to have such a day? Or will a time come when all wars will fade into history?” Perhaps Memorial Day will eventually become Peace Day.

When I first came to Fairhaven, a person came to see me to talk about the need to establish a Department of Peace in our nation. (Perhaps you can guess who that person is!) It was the first time I’d heard of such an idea and what a great and grand idea it is! I believe this idea originated with a woman called “Peace,” Peace Pilgrim who first came to national attention here in the 1950s.

In told you in our newsletter, that a woman called Peace Pilgrim had given up her identity to become a pilgrim. She took on the name “Peace” as her first name and “Pilgrim” as her last. In the book that was put together by her friends after her death, she describes an experience she calls her “enlightenment” that took place in nature probably in the hills and valleys of New England. This is her description of her experience (the italics are mine):

“…I was out walking in the early morning. All of a sudden I felt very uplifted, more uplifted than I had ever been. I remember I knew tirelessness and spacelessness and lightness. I did not seem to be walking on the earth. There were no people or even animals around, but every flower, every bush, every tree seemed to wear a halo. There was a light emanation around everything and flecks of gold fell like slanted rain through the air. …. The most important part of it was the realization of the oneness of all creation. Not only all human beings—I knew before that all human beings are one. But now I knew also a oneness with the rest of creation. The creatures…the air, the water, the earth itself…A oneness with that which many would call God…I have never felt separate since. I could return again and again to this mountaintop…” (p. 21) (From what Peace said elsewhere, I believe that this was an inward returning, in her mind’s eye, so to speak.)

Peace refused to tell anyone her birth date because she didn’t want to get cards. She was already getting Christmas cards and she was committed to reply to every letter and card she got. (A friend in New Jersey received letters for her at a Post Box and forwarded them to her wherever she was to spend some time.) I think she was a New Englander who was likely born in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s for she told us that her serious preparation for pilgrimage was in 1938 when she began, in her words “living to give instead of to get.” And she said that her inner preparation took 15 years. She also said she was grey-haired when she began her first pilgrimage in 1953. So I think she must have begun her first pilgrimage between the ages of 40-50 years old, not that it matters; it is just remarkable for someone her age to do something so physically strenuous.

She got the strong idea one day that she must go on a pilgrimage for peace complete with the map of the U.S. that arose before her mind with the clear markings of west to east, north to south and also across Canada, coast to coast, and also Mexico.

As preparation for her physical pilgrimage, Peace first walked the 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. She walked with nothing except a change of clothes, plastic sheets for sleeping, oatmeal and dried milk for sustenance, and she foraged for the rest. She loved following springtime from south to north and her favorite breakfast was New England, dew-soaked blue berries.

When she began her first pilgrimage January 1, 1953 (which she considers her spiritual birthday) in Pasadena, California, she walked ahead of the Tournament of Roses parade. People welcomed her and received from her typed messages of peace. The press gave her great coverage. She spoke wherever she was invited along the way. She ate when she was given food and slept indoors when she was invited to stay. Otherwise, she slept in fields, under bridges, and anywhere convenient.

For the first pilgrimage, she walked on the highways so that she could keep count of the miles. Her target was 25,000 miles. When the weather was bad, she would go into truck stops and talk to truckers about peace. Sometimes she stayed up all night because they wanted to hear more of what she had to say. They always offered to buy her food. Eventually, she reached the United Nations building in New York City on December 17, 1953—less than a year to walk across the country!

Peace began her second pilgrimage from San Francisco and visited each state capital around the nation walking at least 100 miles in each state. The Korean War was in full swing and the vicious Joseph McCarthy at his most powerful in Congress. Peace began walking between small cities and towns and liked this better because she met ordinary people who would come up to her and walk and talk with her. Sometimes they asked many questions and then she would stop and talk with them.

She was often arrested for vagrancy, especially in the southern states. Sometimes she slept on the concrete floors of prisons for there were no beds. She says that she slept as comfortably on these floors as in the fields or on a mattress. She was always released from prison when she explained what she was doing. Once a policeman arrested her just to protect her for he feared for her safety in his town.

Peace carried with her petitions; one was to establish a Peace Department with a Secretary of Peace. In one place in Texas, she was arrested, finger-printed and photographed and questioned by the FBI. (Was it because of her petitions?) Peace remembered all the grim photos of the wanted that she had seen in Post Offices so she smiled as sweetly as she could. The FBI asked her to answer some questions. She answered as she always did that she would be very happy to answer the questions of a fellow human being not just because they were officers of the law but because they were fellow human beings. They asked her, “If you had to choose between killing and being killed, which would you choose?” Peace responded that it was unlikely she would face such a situation because she lives according to God’s law. They pressed her on this so she finally said that she would prefer to be killed than harm another. Peace Pilgrim was definitely a pacifist. They put her down as having a religious basis for her pilgrimage and she was let go. I strongly suspect that her interviewers were relieved to let her go!

On her walks Peace was not on a schedule so she helped people whenever she could. At one home, she stayed with a mentally disabled man while the family went out; when he became violent towards her, she did not hit back but sent him love. He became calm and stopped the behavior. This was only one of hundreds of instances, including helping the women whose prison cells she shared. Do you think we could do this—meet violence with waves of peace and love from our minds? And would our sincere thought stop the violence?

Peace walked 1,000 miles in Canada, 100 miles in each Canadian province. It was in Quebec when Peace was sorry not to be able to speak to the French speakers, who did not speak English at all in those days. She thought the world should create a common language that we all agree to learn. Perhaps this was the time when Esperanto was first devised? I remember as a girl the popularity of Esperanto! Do you?

In 1964, Peace had completed 25,000 miles on foot for peace at Washington, D.C. (Do you see her photo of this on the back of your Order of Service? Dear Reader, a photo of Peace was on the front of the Order of Service with her name “Peace Pilgrim” on her tunic and on the back a photo of the back of her tunic which read “25,000 Miles on Foot for Peace.”) After she reached her stated goal, she stopped counting miles but continued to walk, crisscrossing the country, right through the period of the Vietnam War. She continued her pilgrimages and I cannot for the life of me understand how I did not hear about her in the 1960s and 70s! Perhaps it was because the nation’s young people (of which I was one) had mobilized for peace and many of their parents’ generation supported them. Peace Pilgrim was now just another peace activist. How many of you had heard about Peace Pilgrim in the 1970’s? (Dear Reader, No one raised a hand, although later one person said she thought she’d heard about Peace Pilgrim in connection with the Quakers—Peace did write that she had worked for peace with the Friends Service Committee in the early days of her work for peace and before the pilgrimage.) She made seven pilgrimages in all, the last one being in 1978, consisted mostly of giving talks around the nation.

In the 1970’s, to save time, Peace began to accept lifts to get to her talks. Sometimes she flew if someone gave her a ticket. I am struck by how she was like a modern day monk or nun—accepting no money, living only in what she could stand up in; she had no burdens whatsoever. She describes her monk-like practices:

The Four Preparations: face your issues and those of the world; live good beliefs; find your place in life; and simplify for inner and outer well-being and harmony.

The Four Purifications: Eat vegan vegetarian food; cultivate positive thoughts indulge in no superficial pleasures; no self-glorification.

The Four Relinquishments: Give oneself up to God’s will; give up the view of separateness for oneness; give up attachments; let go negative feelings.

It is interesting that Peace says that she had no teacher and yet these teachings are very like the vows that Hindu and Buddhist and also western monks and nuns take. (By the way, Peace did not encourage us to look upon her as a teacher but to think for ourselves. She counsels us to follow no one.)

When asked why she didn’t have children, she responded simply that she wasn’t “called” to it while she understands that others are. She believes that we are all called to something and our task is to discover what that is. She mentions this often.

After all these years of calmly doing her work for peace, on her way to a talk on July 7, 1981, she was killed instantly in a head-on collision on July 7, 1981. She was to give a talk in Knox, Indiana, while on her seventh pilgrimage. I calculate that her “ministry” was longer than the Buddha’s, which was 40 years. Her God concept was likely to be much like his as she described in the reading this morning—the creative force of which we are all a part and yet an intelligence beyond. She was probably in her 80’s when she died.

Peace Pilgrim’s friends who maintain her collection of writings and a website have added many news articles about her to a book of her writings and recordings of interviews. One news article is dated April 28, 1979, two years before her death. In it she reiterated what she had been saying all along (not a quote—a paraphrase):

Evil behavior is caused by immaturity; peace comes about by maturity; there’s no use forming more organizations for peace because people with peace in their hearts will affect their existing institutions; and developing peace within (or inner-peace) is the first step towards peace and without peace within the individual, there cannot be peace.

Why did I become interested in Peace Pilgrim? I was pondering deeply what to do with my upcoming sabbatical in January through April, 2008. It came to me (in a still small persistent voice that just wouldn’t stop) that I should spend it on peace studies, meditation, and activities. I thought, “Why don’t I become ‘a peace pilgrim’? I wondered whether there were other peace pilgrims so I got onto the Internet and there I found the woman called Peace Pilgrim and many others who call themselves Friends of Peace Pilgrim who are now or who have been on walks for peace. I found that Leo (my husband) is also interested in being a peace pilgrim and so we will form a plan of some things we do together and some separately for peace while I am on sabbatical.

I know that some of Leo’s peace activities will be in our garden, where we have a peace pond with a statue of the Buddha! Our version of being a peace pilgrim will be far less grand and spectacular than THE Peace Pilgrim but we may create soon a tee shirt with “A Peace Pilgrim” on it and create our peace pilgrimage spontaneously. Perhaps you would like a tee shirt like this too to wear whenever we do peace activities here or elsewhere. Lisa Allen is going to help me create my own label on a tee shirt. Maybe she’ll help anyone who wants it.

I remind us that our congregations across the country will be studying and doing peacemaking for the next three years as we decided at our UU General Assembly in 2006. This is why our children are also studying peacemaking and next Sunday there will be many peacemaking activities taking place following the intergeneration service. Don’t miss it for it will be great fun and heart-connecting as well.

Beginning our study of peacemaking by reading Peace Pilgrim’s book would be a very good and enjoyable thing to do and honoring of her memory. By the way, there are dozens of copies of this book in the libraries of this area. But you will no doubt want to get your own copy and read it over and over. Amazon.com has many used copies for 10 cents. However, be sure to get the second edition. Or perhaps you would like to support the Friends of Peace Pilgrim organization by buying the book from them at www.peacepilgrim.net.

Let me conclude with a quote from Peace Pilgrim’s book (called Peace Pilgrim) on what a pilgrim was for her. She says:

“A pilgrim is a wanderer with a purpose. A pilgrimage can be to a place—that’s the best known kind—but it can also be for a thing. Mine is for peace, and that is why I am a Peace Pilgrim.

My pilgrimage covers the entire peace picture: 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.

The situation in the world around us is just a reflection of the collective situation. In the final analysis, only as we become more peaceful people will we be finding ourselves living in a more peaceful world….my peace message [is] one sentence:

‘This is the way of peace—overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love’.” (pp. 25-26)

May our efforts for peacemaking help our world mature as we mature, developing inner peace and outward peaceful activity, for blessed are the peacemakers. So may we be!

I had a very favorable beginning, although many of you might not think so. I was born poor on a small farm on the outskirts of a small town, and I’m thankful for that. I was happy in my childhood. I had a woods to play in and a creek to swim in and room to grow. I wish that every child could have had growing space because I think children are a little like plants. If they grow too close together they become thin and sickly and never obtain maximum growth. We need room to grow.

We begin to prepare for the work that we have to do and customarily we have no idea what we are preparing for. So as a child I had no idea what I was preparing for. And yet, of course, I was in many respects…preparing for the pilgrimage when I chose my rule of ‘first things first’ and began to set priorities in my life. It led to a very orderly life and it taught me self discipline—a very valuable lesson, without which I could never have walked a pilgrimage. I carried it right into my adult life.

I received no formal religious training as a child. (It would be less that I would have to undo from my mind later on!) …. When I was a senior in high school I began to make my search for God, but all my efforts were in an outward direction….I went about inquiring, “What is God? What is God?” Intellectually I could not find God on the outside, so I tried another approach. I took a long walk with my dog and pondered deeply upon the question. Then I went to bed and slept over it. And in the morning I had my answer from the inside, through a still small voice.

Intellectually I touched God many times as truth and emotionally I touched God as love. I touched God as goodness. I touched God as kindness. It came to me that God is a creative force, a motivating power, an over-all intelligence, and ever-present, all pervading spirit—which binds everything in the universe together and gives life to everything. That brought God close. I could not be where God is not. You are within God. God is within you. (pp1-2)