As usual, I chose to make a nearby church my first pit-stop upon arriving, where – also as usual – I paused to revel in its cool & peaceful confines; offering up professings of profound gratitude for having been able to flow this far so meaningfully, alongside a renewed resolve to continue onward in the same humble-yet-heartfelt vein …

“Christians like to tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is — not that they have the integrity to be kind to their enemies, and not even that they have the common goodness to adore their friends, but rather that they embody the basic decency required to treat those who differ from them with simple respect & fairness. We who believe differently than they do not wish to be forgiven by them, but we do wish for Christians to act in such a manner that we will be called to forgive them. If all of them would simply admit that everyone – regardless of celestial creed (or lack thereof) – has an equal right to uniquely think and feel and believe, then the question of Peace on Earth is forever solved. And yet as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of a postmortem judiciary called Heaven and Hell, choose to openly denounce every nonbeliever who thinks for him or herself and denies their authority as an outcast &/or a criminal, then the world will continue to be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate (or at least judge, and thereby condemn or dismiss) another while simultaneously worshiping God seems to be the sum of most creeds, and is an immoral hypocrisy that always serves to instigate violence and great injustice. As such, if a Christian – or any other devout believer, for that matter – wishes to follow any way that is truly worth walking, he or she must be humbly willing to open the same to all and tread thereupon hand in hand with all of unlike mind.” ~ inspired by Robert G. Ingersoll

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