After a long day of walking and with the Sun already beginning to set, I left the George Washington Bridge behind and entered the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Darkness was clearly on the near horizon and my body was aching pretty strongly, so I headed for the nearest church steeple to see if there might be any form of shelter I might find there for the night. And this was an extremely reasonable assumption at this point in my Journey. After all, the churches I had encountered so far along my Walk had almost all been quite well-met, with many offering encouragement, with the majority offering places of rest, with a few even offering sustenance to yours truly. And yet I was soon to learn on this day that I was no longer in Europe, and that hospitality would have a very different meaning here in the States – certainly when it came to American churches. For it proved to be the case that while their European counterparts were often honored to open their hearts & doors to Peace Pilgrims (if not the poor in general), American churches and their supposed “spiritual leaders” tended to turn the same away. And this truth – a truth that would be born out again & again & again over the course of the next 40+ days of my pilgrimage – was never more pronounced than on this first New jersey night. Initially I stopped in at the blatantly multi-cultural Madonna Roman Catholic Church, where Father Steve was effusively appreciative of my intentions & efforts but ultimately unwilling to assist the same (he, like so many of his American Christian brethren, was ostensibly “handcuffed” by a lack of proper insurance coverage “should something go wrong” during my potential stay). Steve did get me to Andersen Avenue at least, a southerly-vectored route that I wandered for the next several hours that night. And on that avenue were a number of additional churches found, each one as unwilling to help as the last. And the fear-inspired callousness that they all exhibited was not reserved for the Catholic denomination, as I was met & rejected in turn by the New Synagogue of Fort Lee, the Onnuri Community Church, the Cliffside Park 1^st Baptist Church, the Fairview St. John’s Baptist Church (“I’m only a guest preacher”), Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Church (“Why don’t you ask next door at St. John’s Convent”), the St. John’s Convent, and a local branch of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (“Tonight’s not a good night for us. Maybe you should ask the local police station for help.”) …

“And ever again we are reminded that awakening – or Enlightenment as some would say – is not the exclusive property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is owned outright by Christianity. Indeed neither the Buddha nor Jesus belonged exclusively to the communities that were and have been founded in their names. Instead they belong to all people of gentleness & goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness – the secret known as selflessness, the secret known as charity, the secret known as self-sacrifice, the secret known as Love … Indeed, the true & greatest value of any human being can only be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self – a liberation that is the opposite of religious piousness; a liberation that is only seen in humble acts of non-judgmental giving.” ~ inspired by Jean-Yves Leloup & Albert Einstein

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt