Remembering Peace Pilgrim

Peace Pilgrim was truly an American saint, and it is good to know and remember  in these cynical times that there are people like her in the world.  

Remembering Peace Pilgrim - An American Sage

 At age 44, Mildred Norman left her life in California and became Peace Pilgrim -- walking coast to coast for peace, living on faith, and sharing her wisdom and exhuberance generously with people across the land. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years. On July 7, 1981, while being driven to a speaking engagement in Indiana, Peace Pilgrim was killed in an automobile accident. At the time of her death, she was crossing the United States for the seventh time. Below is a 60-minute documentary about her life and message, which  includes are interviews with the  Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou, John Robbins, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and many of Peace Pilgrim's friends, along with newsreel footage from the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's.

Peace Pilgrim:  An American Sage Who Walked Her Talk

  

"The second relinquishment is the relinquishment of the feeling of separateness. We begin feeling very separate and judging everything as it relates to us, as though we were the center of the universe. In reality, of course, we are all cells in the body of humanity. We are not separate from our fellow humans. The whole thing is a totality. From that higher viewpoint there becomes just one realistic way to work, and that is for the good of the whole. As long as you work for your selfish little self, you're just one cell against all those other cells, and you're way out of harmony."

Peace Pilgrim, in 1953, at the height of nuclear armament, took a vow to walk for Peace until all of humanity could live in peace. In her own words,

"I felt guided or called or motivated to begin my pilgrimage for peace in the world - a journey undertaken traditionally. The tradition of pilgrimage is a journey undertaken on foot and on faith, prayerfully and as an opportunity to contact people. I wear a lettered tunic in order to contact people. It says 'PEACE PILGRIM' on the front. I feel that's my name now - it emphasizes my mission instead of me. And on the back it says '25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE.' The purpose of the tunic is merely to make contacts for me. Constantly as I walk along the highways and through the cities, people approach me and I have a chance to talk with them about peace.

I have walked 25,000 miles as a penniless pilgrim. I own only what I wear and what I carry in my pockets. I belong to no organization. I have said that I will walk until given shelter and fast until given food, remaining a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace. And I can truthfully tell you that without ever asking for anything, I have been supplied with everything needed for my journey, which shows you how good people really are."

With nothing but the clothes on her back, she devoted her life to becoming "a walking prayer" for peace.  

Q: Do you work for a living?

 
A:  I work for my living in an unusual way. I give what I can through thoughts and words and deeds to those whose lives I touch and to humanity. In return I accept what people want to give, but I do not ask. They are blessed by their giving and I am blessed by my giving.

Q: Why don't you accept money?

 
A: Because I talk about spiritual truth, and spiritual truth should never be sold - those who sell it injure themselves spiritually. The money that comes in the mail - without being solicited - I do not use for myself; I use it for printing and postage. Those who attempt to buy spiritual truth are trying to get it before they are ready. In this wonderfully well-ordered universe, when they are ready, it will be given.

https://youtu.be/6ySs2rLcPhU

A Year Ago.........

My mother passed away exactly a year ago, and my brother six months before that.   I took this picture of their chairs, in the place where they both used to like to sit and watch the sunset.   I miss them.

Too Brilliant, too true, and too funny Australian Look at Corporate Ethics..............

On the eve of the TPP passing and all those suits with pens signing away the future for more unlimited greed,  slave labor in China and Bangladesh, and disposible plastic gee gaws and "instant fashion" for us, this marvelous satire of the coal industry's executives in Australia is true of more than just that country.

https://youtu.be/tqXzAUaTUSc




***and, well, I couldn't help but throw in John Oliver as a Post Script.

Homeric Hymn to Mother Earth

from "Numina - Our Changing Earth", a play by Ann Waters

To Earth the Mother of All

I will sing of the well-founded Earth,

mother of all, eldest of all beings.

She feeds all creatures that are in the world,

all that go upon the goodly land,

all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;

all these are fed of her store.

Through you, O Queen, we are blessed

In our children, and in our harvest

and to you we owe our lives.

Happy are we who you delight to honor!

We have all things abundantly:

our houses are filled with good things,

our cities are orderly,

our sons exult with feverish delight.

(May they take no delight in war)

Our daughters with flower-laden hands

play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.

(May they seek peace for all peoples)

Thus it is for those whom you honor,

O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!

Hail Earth, mother of the gods,

freely bestow upon us for this our song

that cheers and soothes the heart!

(May we seek peace for all peoples of the well-founded earth)

Homeric Hymn XXX,

adapted by Elizabeth Roberts

Midwives

Ancestral Midwives (2013)

I was thinking of my friend Lorie, who provided the hands for this sculpture.  Lorie retired just a few years ago from a long career as a midwife in Pittsburgh, and when I asked to cast her hands she assumed this pose, which she told me is a hand gesture used to symbolize midwifery.   To have spent so many years bringing new life into the world! 

"Numinous".......Personal Icons

She will rust us with blossom

She will seal us with Her seed.

Robin Williamson

The first deities of Rome were agricultural.
Before they became an empire or adopted Greek mythologies, the Romans called their deities  "numen",  which roughly translated meant "spirits of place", the "mind of place". These early deities included Pomona, goddess of the Orchards, and many other local deities concerned with the well being of trees, springs, deer, rivers. and caves.

I've been looking at many of my personal "Icons" lately, and I realize that, like the early Romans, so many of them are about the Numinous in nature, the felt prescence, the the intelligence and conversation experienced in the garden, or at the top of a mountain for that matter as well.  My  personal Icons return always  to the intelligence of nature, the "numinous".  


When I was younger  I remember  conversations I had with beaches and stones and butterflies, the world was full of Talismans to be found and treasured, magical signs and portents.  There are still places I can go, where those  mysterious voices are heard.  The divine is beneath our feet, in the roots, the cracks, the dragon trails of wind and rain moving across the expressive faces of the day.

In the past I was fascinated with the ubiquitous "hand and eye" symbols found among the prehistoric  peoples of early America, the mysterious Mound Builders.  Also exploring in my art the equally ubiquitous stories of the Great Weaver, the Spider Woman, I began making hands with eyes myself, and called my project "Spider Woman's Hands".    The  eyes mean to me that immanent presence and intelligence in nature.  The eye in the hand also means to me, personally, the divine manifesting and creating in this world, through all natural processes, and through the works of our hands as well.  

And the roots are the Web, the sustanence and interdependancy that unites us with all Beings of the Earth.   The Body of the World, our Body.  
  

16 million tons of rain
are falling every second

on the planet,
an ocean
perpetually falling
and every drop
is your body
every motion, every feather,
 every thought

is your body

time is your body

every leaf, every river,
every animal,
your body

Drew Dellinger

The Questions of Maat

In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that the Goddess Maat waits in the Underworld, before a door all souls who have died must enter to pass into new life. She holds in her hand a scale and a feather. Maat weighs hearts, and none may pass until they have answered her questions, and their hearts are as light as the feather of truth.  How heavy is each heart? 

I find "the questions of Maat" such a significant metaphor, a metaphor about forgiveness and releasing the past to new evolution.  Because to dream a new life, to be born again, one must truly know the life that has been lived, one must forgive and be forgiven, enter into the stream of transformation.

When I turned 60 it was a tremendous passage for me.  Certainly, I felt the "lightening" that came with transit into my 6th decade. I had the urge to get rid of things that weighed me down, weren't relevant, and demanded my attention in some unnecessary way. Old love letters that just made me sad, pretty dresses that no longer fit and probably never will, dusty boxes of mementoes, weary assumptions, heavy handed beliefs, habits of mind that once were useful adaptations to something or other, but now were  boringly repetitious. I went through a period of self-examination, and noticed that very many of my assumptions were erroneous, often blocked my vision, and was probably unfair to somebody somewhere, including myself.  Unused possessions require care, require storage, require energy, require memory.  It was time to light-en up and enter the stream.

Natalie Goldberg, in her book "Writing down the Bones", tells of meeting Meridel le Sueur in her eighties.  A true nomad, Meridel told her that she lived nowhere. She visited people and places, writing wherever she was. The elderly writer asked Natalie if she knew a place to purchase a used typewriter. When she is ready to leave, she said, she will give it away so she doesn't have to take it to her next destination.  Now that I understand. Why should one wish to lug a typewriter around, or a bulky suitcase, or for that matter, an old grudge, a worn out storyline, or an exhausted persona?  Such unexamined baggage surely slows the creative journey of life down, making it difficult to create into the future.  

A reporter once asked the artist Pablo Picasso, at 90 or so, what he thought, after such a long and distinguished career, his greatest work was. He replied "The next one."  This is the lightening of the heart and mind the Goddess Maat weighs. Maat's name meant "truth" in ancient Egyptian. Her questions do not "damn" those who wait before the door....but without answering them, without finding the truth of one's life, no passage to other realms of being is possible.   We are stuck at the station, waiting for the train. 

Maat's questions are questions each soul must answer sooner or later. "Who have I not fore-given?" "What have I done that I cannot fore-give myself for?" "What part of my life story have I not been able to see, or to fore-give?" 

I am always stunned when I examine out of context the language we unconsciously take for granted in daily speech, and humbled further when I consider that each language has its singular depths of meaning unique to its cultural evolution.  In English usage, to "fore-give" is to do just that - to "give the energy forward". To the future, to the unknown, to new possibilities of relationship and creativity, to new responsibilities, endeavors, and perhaps high adventure. To the continual growth of wisdom and compassion. When we don't fore-give we are left with psychic baggage, stories told so many times they have lost any semblance to the truth.

I am not saying that fore-giveness is a simple thing.  Sometimes it involves working through layers of experience, telling our story over and over until it can be truthfully seen, and sometimes we need help from wise or impartial listeners. But ultimately I believe fore-giveness comes from being able to gain a wider perspective, the integral Soul's perspective.  From that perspective, which often requires faith as well, there is a greater landscape that weaves together the ways we were challenged and deepened by our experiences, our betrayals, our failures, our losses, our ignorance, and our blessings.

I remember years ago there was a man I was attracted to. The Eros of my experience fueled enormous creativity in me. His considerable talent inspired me as well.   And because I had a lot of unripe, naive ideas, and did not know how to confront him, he also had a lot of fun manipulating and humiliating me, probably just because he could. He never pretended that he was a kind or conscionable person, and I still cringe when I think about it. 

But until I was able to fore-give him and myself, I was unable to see the gifts in that experience, indeed, unable to get beyond it. Now I realize that had I not met him, I would not have created what I did at that time in my life.   And I probably would not have moved through the well defended "victim" template I was deeply entrenched in and attached to.  I could not assume a "victim" position with this man.  I had to grow and take care of myself, and from that perspective, ultimately he empowered me. That is the paradox of Maat's Truth.

Raukkadessa is a Finnish term a musician friend, Kathy Huhtaluata, used in her Saami inspired music.  She told me it means "beyond love". I find this concept profound - because even love, as we experience it, can be a veil, impenetrable in the present moment, and beyond that momentary experience is something vast, beyond the pairs of opposites, beyond time itself. Beyond love is the soul's love, the greater evolutionary pattern.

A Buddhist once told me that we should cherish all sentient beings, because, from the perspective of reincarnation, any sentient being you meet has at one time or another been your mother, brother, lover, enemy, has been your food, or has devoured you.   
One thing is certain. When we don't fore-give, we are unable to move fore-ward, because we are stuck in the past of phantom hurts and ghostly losses, attempting to keep them alive with our own life energy. 

And from my perspective, one of the wonderful things about having had the privilege of achieving the maturity of 60 some years is that one has the means and experience to finally know just that.   May all hearts be light as Maat's feather.