January 4 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace
Listen to NPR story about "Peace Pilgrim" and her quest for a meaningful life
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/01/168346591/peace-pilgrims-28-year-walk-for-a-meaningful-way-of-life
In 1953, Mildred Norman set off from the Rose Bowl parade on New
Year's Day with a goal of walking the entire country for peace. She left
her given name behind and took up a new identity: Peace Pilgrim.
When
Peace Pilgrim started out, the Korean War was still under way, and an
ominous threat of a nuclear attack was on the minds of many Americans.
And so, with "Peace Pilgrim" written across her chest, she began walking
"coast to coast for peace."
For 28 years — the time she spent
on her journey — she never used money. She gave new meaning to the word
minimalist, wearing the same clothes every day: blue pants and a blue
tunic that held everything she owned: a pen, a comb, a toothbrush and a
map. That's it.
"I own only what I wear and carry. I just walk
until given shelter, fast until given food," she said at the time. "I
don't even ask; it's given without asking. I tell you, people are good.
There's a spark of good in everybody."
Mildred Norman at 16, when, as her sister
says, "she had to have the latest clothing." When she devoted herself to
walking for peace, she took on a completely different kind of life.
Courtesy of Friends Of Peace Pilgrim
'Doing Something Different'
In July
1981, the day before she died, Peace Pilgrim was interviewed by Ted
Hayes, the manager of a small radio station in Knox, Ind.
"Peace
Pilgrim, you know there are a certain number of people who would
probably think of somebody like yourself as a kook or a nut," Hayes
said. "Do you have a problem overcoming this barrier with some people?"
"Well,
I'm quite sure that some of those who have just heard of me must think
I'm completely off the beam," Peace Pilgrim responded. "After all, I am
doing something different. And pioneers have always been looked upon as
being a bit strange.
"But you see, I love people and I see the
good in them," she continued. "And you're apt to reach what you see. The
world is like a mirror: if you smile at it, it smiles at you. I love to
smile, and so in general, I definitely receive smiles in return."
One
night, while driving on an Ohio road, book publisher and editor Richard
Polese saw Peace Pilgrim, "kind of dashing a bit out of the way of the
traffic on the road. And I had no idea who it was," he recalls. Years
later, Polese met Peace Pilgrim and the two became friends.
Peace
Pilgrim once described her childhood on a small farm on the outskirts
of Egg Harbor, a small town two miles from Cologne, N.J., as a "very
quiet life ... I had a woods to play in, and a creek to swim in and room
to grow."
Peace Pilgrim's sister, Helene Young, 97, says
Mildred Norman "was very much what they called a flapper in those days.
She had to have the latest clothing. So, she made so many changes in her
life to a very simple, basic life," Young says.
"We were
brought up without a formal religion or politics," Young adds. "We were
taught to think for ourselves, not follow the sheep."
A Walk In The Woods Becomes A Pilgrimage
"During
the early years of my life, I discovered that money-making was easy but
not satisfying," Young once explained. And one night in the late 1930s,
"out of a feeling of deep seeking for a meaningful way of life," Peace
Pilgrim began walking through the woods.
"And after I had
walked almost all night, I came out into a clearing where the moonlight
was shining down. And something just motivated me to speak and I found
myself saying, 'If you can use me for anything, please use me. Here I
am, take all of me, use me as you will, I withhold nothing,'" Peace
Pilgrim recalled. "That night, I experienced the complete willingness,
without any reservations whatsoever, to give my life to something beyond
myself."
Peace Pilgrim acknowledged that some may have
considered her "kooky." But, she once said, "pioneers have always been
looked upon as being a bit strange."
Carla Anette/Courtesy of Friends Of Peace Pilgrim
Fifteen years passed between this striking moment of clarity and
the official beginning of her pilgrimage. To prepare, one of the things
Peace Pilgrim did was walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in
one year — the first woman to do so.
"She was not interested
in being a mother, and that was why she knew that she could handle the
pilgrimage, because she did not leave family behind," her sister Helene
Young explains. "She and her husband were divorced, because she thought
he should be a conscientious objector and his sergeant told him that was
grounds for divorce."
The first year of her walk, Peace
Pilgrim was thrown into jail for vagrancy, Young explains. "And they
found out she wasn't a commie so they let her go."
But Polese
says his friend had no fear of jail. "She felt that jails were wonderful
places to carry on the mission," he says. "She would gather the women
prisoners together and teach them a little song, a little chant called
'The Fountain of Love.'"
The motto Peace Pilgrim had sewn on
the back of her tunic when she started out, "Walking Coast to Coast for
Peace," quickly became outdated. By 1964 she had already walked 25,000
miles. Eventually, she stopped counting.
A Fateful Speaking Engagement
As
she became more well-known, Peace Pilgrim began getting invitations to
speak at schools and churches. Which is what brought her to Knox, Ind.,
in the summer of 1981. That's where a woman who had spent her life
walking through every state and most of Canada lost her life riding in a
car.
Tony and Terry Bau, who run Bau Collision Repair, were outside in the yard when the accident occurred.
"I
got on the side of her, she was still alive when I got up there," Terry
recalls. "I was talking to her, just telling her everything would be
OK."
"Even though we didn't know her — we didn't know any of
her writings or anything like that — we still lived her life," Tony
says. "'Cause I believe in exactly what she believes in: being free and
try to have a more peaceful world amongst people."
Peace
Pilgrim's journey ended on the side of that road in Indiana 30 years
ago, but her followers say they continue to find meaning in her message
and to be inspired by her example.
On the radio program the day
before her death, Hayes, the host, read Peace Pilgrim's vow aloud: "'I
shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace,
walking until I am given shelter and fasting until I am given food.'"
And, he added, "She appears to be a most happy woman."
"I certainly am a happy person," Peace Pilgrim responded. "Who could know God and not be joyous? I want to wish you all peace."
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