Ch 01 – An Introduction to The Walk … (04/09/11)
“It’s OK … I’ll walk.”
A seemingly harmless sentence, if one is speaking about going to the store or heading home from school, and yet this time it was something much different. With this seemingly innocuous utterance, I had agreed to set forth on a 777 mile* Peace Pilgrimage, a service that would prove to be by far the most difficult — and by far the most rewarding — of my entire life.
In essence, this is the tale of 40 days of my life — 40 days in which I covered over 900 miles of terrain, 650+ of it on foot. I made the entire Trek “on Faith” — meaning that I traveled as the Peace Pilgrim traveled (http://www.peacepilgrim.org), fasting until offered food and walking until offered shelter. I took no money with me when I set out, and I accepted no financial assistance at all along the way. I also made a pact with myself that I would not ask for food the entire Way – a pact that I upheld to the very last minute. I survived in no small part due to the amazing Kindness of others — a powerful testimony to the innate Goodness of humankind.
And yet this was anything but the most profound enlightenment I experienced. What started as an extreme test of physical and emotional endurance, quickly became an internal Quest — a Journey into the very Heart of God; a walk to the very center of the human Soul. I commenced my Walk heading to southern Florida, and yet I arrived over & over again at a far greater destination: at what it means to live in every moment as a true Human Being …
… but you’ll see what I mean as the tale progresses.
*If all had gone “as planned”, 777 would have been the actual number of miles I walked … God is still chuckling.
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Before I begin to relay the physical, emotional & spiritual adventures of the Pilgrimage, it might prove helpful to have a few insights into the trip’s basic logistics …
The first question that people tend to ask me is “Why?!” And the answer is relatively straight-forward: because I was asked. Not asked in the traditional sense, of course … Rather, I was simply presented with the opportunity to walk, at a time when I chose to be willing to set forth. For the past five+ years, dozens of folks have been flying me all over the country to serve selflessly and share about The Way of “radical Kindness”. And I have been regularly telling those same folks that, if the means was not fluid for them to fly me, that I would walk to them. For five years, no one asked me to walk and no one needed me t do so. Just this past January, however, I was speaking with a friend from Pompano Beach, Florida. She was lamenting during our call that she did not have the funds to even get me a bus ticket to come down and share with the members of her community. I knew right away that no one had asked me to serve elsewhere during the months of April & May, so without hesitation I uttered the words — “It’s OK … I’ll walk”.
And that was that …
It then became necessary to define how I was going to travel those many miles to Pompano Beach. Yes, I could have hitch-hiked to Florida, or even jumped a train to get there. And yet the entire purpose of the Journey was to relay The Selfless Way to others once I arrived, so why not make the entire Journey a relaying of that same beautiful message? To do so I would have to move at a pace that encouraged and allowed for as much intimate contact with others as possible — and that meant walking (I did accept rides during the middle 13 days of the 40-day Trek, but that was done Meaning-fully, as you will later see). To do so also meant walking in a way that called as much attention as possible to my Quest, and it meant doing so in a humble & gentle manner. This required that I walk as the Peace Pilgrim had walked; taking no money with me & accepting none along the way; fasting until offered food; and walking until offered shelter. Living in such a blatantly unusual manner, and doing so Joy-fully, allowed me to be regularly approached by others who were curious enough to open up to me — as opposed to me intimidating or even offending others by “preaching” to them. I just walked and beamed Love to folks, while waiting for them to come to me — waiting for them to come and see for themselves … I simply let my Walk become my Talk.
Next, I needed to decide how to identify myself along the way. Part of my philosophy of “gentle sharing” is to do so only when asked, so I needed some way of silently identifying myself as something other than a typical wanderer. I needed some way to let folks know that there was something unusual afoot. I needed to do something to inspire others to ask me what I was doing & why. The Peace Pilgrim herself provided the solution with the blue smock she wore while walking. It simply said “Peace Pilgrim” on the front, and displayed a message related to her pilgrimage on the back. In honor of her amazing 28-year excursion, I purposefully decided to not adopt her particular title, opting for “Numinous Nomad” instead. I chose this name for the simple reason that “nomad” was the only synonym for “pilgrim” that felt right, and “numinous” was the only appropriate adjective I could find that began with an “N” (“nifty” & “nice” just didn’t cut it).
“Numinous”, by the way, happens to have an interesting set of definitions — the gestalt of which being: “the mystery of the Divine that shines forth in every deed of Kindness”. Of course, the real challenge became obtaining said smock. After meeting with repeated failure in finding a print shop that would even make me a T-shirt, I simply let the idea go. Besides, part of me desired a smock because I didn’t have faith that I would be helped by others without in some way advertising what I was doing, which felt weak & inconsistent. After all, this Pilgrimage was supposed to be about Faith in humanity! So I stopped “pushing the river” & told the Universe in no uncertain terms that I was going to walk — period, with a smock or without one.
A few days after making this completely sincere (and, I admit, somewhat agitated) utterance to God, I was contacted by my dear friend, Neal Yasami (now “The Peace Artist” — you can find him on Facebook, or read his fantastic blog @ http://www.thepeaceartist.com). In this conversation, Neal talked about the smock he was having made for his own Peace Pilgrimage, and he then offered to have one made for mine! I gratefully accepted, and received it in the mail only one week before setting out. Here’s a picture of me in the smock taken the day it arrived by post … 😉
Finally, I needed to decide what to take with me. There were many items that any prudent Pilgrim would want to have with him/her on such a long-distance trip, and yet this was purposefully not a Journey of prudence. After all, I wasn’t walking to simply make it to Pompano Beach — I was walking to inspire as many people as possible along the way to awaken to the effectiveness of “radical Kindness”. And this was going to require walking in as radical a fashion as possible.
As such, I limited myself to the following items, all of which were chosen for their ability to serve others in some way, and most which fit in the small hemp bag (roughly 12″ x “12 x 4”) that I carried over my shoulder:
one change of underwear & one change of socks (In retrospect, both of these proved to be unnecessary),
some basic toiletries — toothbrush & toothpaste, soap, nail clippers, deodorant & a vial of myrrh (These all served others by sparing them the challenge of being assaulted by my “olfactory presence”),
a travel Bible (I did indeed have the good fortune to on more than one occasion be asked to “take the pulpit”, and yet this Bible wasn’t ever used when I did so),
my Journal-notebook & a pen,
a CD with the music for the workshop I would be sharing in Pompano Beach,
my “facilitator’s handbook” for that workshop,
and the clothes on my body … That’s it.
Many people, upon hearing this list, asked me why I wasn’t taking a tent or a water bottle or a cell phone, and my answer to each was similar. Essentially, the more difficult this Pilgrimage would be, the more people it would inspire. At least this was the theory, and this theory was indeed validated by my experiences. Instead of seeing a wandering camper who would soon be pitching his tent for the night, folks saw a man walking down the road with no idea where he was going to take shelter. Instead of seeing a hiker who would soon be stopping to drink from his water bottle on a sweltering day, folks saw a man who was extremely thirsty with no water in sight. And when speaking with me, instead of seeing a risk-taker who would at some point be forced to use his cell phone to call for help, folks saw someone who was truly Walking his Talk — someone who had no back-up plan whatsoever — someone who, if things did “go wrong in the middle of nowhere”, could very well perish.
There is little doubt in my mind that this style of “radical pilgrimage” forced people to take notice, and I also believe it inspired them to at least consider doing something Kind for me — when they would otherwise have found it all too easy to look away. Granted, most of the people I encountered did not muster up the courage to actually heed this Call to Compassion, and yet many of them did. And all of them that did received the Gift of Gifts — the Bliss that washes over every one of us who chooses to help another when least inclined to do so. It was the “radical” way in which I walked my Pilgrimage that made this Awakening possible for them. And it was inspiring such Awakenings that was one of the primary purposes of the Pilgrimage in the first place.
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Finally, here are a few important notes about the Blog itself:
Initially, while I did take copious notes related to the external happenings of my Trek, this Blog is more of a memoir of my internal Journey — how it felt to come face-to-face with primal fear; how it felt to transcend previously unknown limits of pain; how it felt to give — and to receive — radical Kindness in the most trying of circumstances; in essence, how it felt to walk “hand in hand” with the Divine.
As such, while the tale will be told in rough chronological order, each entry is more a loosely sewn quilt of independent encounters than a seamlessly woven carpet of events. The vast majority of my moments between each individual encounter were spent “alone with the Universe” — having no contact with others and no place to rest, simply walking — walking — walking — walking down seemingly endless stretches of desolate country highway. Needless to say, there is not much to write about these times … I simply walked, and tried my best to remain consciously “upbeat” while I did so; tried my best to extend loving Kindness to every passenger of every car that passed me by; tried to “think past the pain” I was experiencing and send Peace to every person I met. Sometimes I succeeded in doing so, sometimes I did not … And yet successful or not, I always returned to the Mission of being a walking embodiment of Love; of “being the change I wanted to see” (Gandhi).
Secondly, it might prove interesting to attend to the Blog’s “Quotes of the Moment”, which are written in indigo blue … I carried very few items with me on my Journey, one of which being a notebook-sized journal. In it, I had planned to write many of my favorite quotes and Bible verses in the margins of its pages before I left, to be inspired by them later during my Walk. As there was never time to prepare the notebook in this fashion, I simply printed out those quotes & verses, cut them out individually, and placed them all in an envelope that I took with me. Then, at various moments during each day of the Pilgrimage, I would “randomly” pull one of the quotes from the envelope and write it into my notes. It was amazing to me how perfectly many of them matched the experiences I was having at the time they were drawn. The entire Pilgrimage was, to some extent, one big laboratory for experimenting with the concepts of Interconnection and Synchronicity, and these “Quotes of the Moment” were an intriguing facet of that experiment.
It is also important to say a few words about the Biblical/Christian references in this Blog. There is a rich Christian heritage in the United States, one with characteristics that are simultaneously inspiring (e.g. the Christian call to charity) and disturbing (e.g. the evangelical movement towards condemnation & exclusivism). Personally, I have made it one of my Missions in Life to explore the depths of the mysteries of Biblical Scripture (feel free to download the recordings & handouts from my Avant Garde Bible Study — http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php#b3amu2i1ga58l,1). Though it is safe to say that I have become somewhat of an authority of the contents of the Bible, by any traditional measure I am not a Christian. And yet by Jesus’ own standards, I am in-deed a devout Follower of The Way of Jesus Christ. As one of the few who seem to be blessed with the awareness of the drastic difference between these two philosophies, I feel Called to gently relay the same to as many Christians as I can during this lifetime — something I did regularly on this Pilgrimage. Keep this in mind as you read the Bible verses in this Blog. All of them have many more meanings than the traditional ones taught in most churches, and should be read accordingly.
Finally, I did not take a camera with me on this Journey, so there will be very few images to share. Maybe this a good thing — maybe this will more readily allow you to fulfill one of my primary intentions for this Pilgrimage: to inspire you to not only learn about my own Walk, but also to take what you read and use it to start Walking your own Lives anew.
In essence, then — enJOY!
Scaughdt
a.k.a. The Numinous Nomad
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