27 Maria Helped

27.

“Maria Helped”

The two little books that started me off—that changed me from a traveler to a pilgrim were: The Way of the Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way written by an unknown Russian a couple of hundred years ago.

You can sometimes find these two short narratives bound together as one volume in a used bookstore. They helped me.

Another book I recommend is by a middle aged American woman, who, following some “inner voice”, set out from Los Angeles across the United States by foot, without money, backpack or change of clothing, to make a pilgrimage for peace.

Assuming the name “Peace Pilgrim”, she walked all day every day, meditating on peace and talking about peace with everyone she met. She did not eat until she was offered food and had no shelter until shelter was offered. She would not reveal her pre- pilgrimage identity, which she said was unimportant. She persisted in this foolish, even insane behavior for many years, visiting every one of the fifty United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, which she visited after receiving gift airplane tickets from helpful souls, since she would accept no money. She spoke, when asked, on the radio and on TV, to organizations and to individuals, always on the subject of peace.

When she was killed in an automobile accident on her way to a speaking engagement, her admirers (she would tolerate no “disciples”) collected her sayings and published them in book form.

The book is distributed free internationally and I hope you will find it and read it some day. It is inspiring to me: PEACE PILGRIM, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words, 1982, Ocean Tree Books, PO Box 1295, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA 87504.

You might also enjoy Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book by Annie Dillard, which is currently available in many American bookstores.. Her meditative thoughts, generated by simple everyday events and told in a gentle, perceptive way, may enhance your pilgrimage as it has mine.

Annie’s pilgrimage was not a walk to a “holy place”, but to that holy place within where patience, solitude, silence, keen observation and a receptive spirit may bring realization.

Most certainly, to the holy, every place is a holy place; every tree a holy tree and every drop of water, holy water.

All of life seems equally holy and perhaps there is nothing holier in the entire universe than your own sacred consciousness reading these words.

Tomasito, 2009


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