This is a quick update for everybody who's been following the progress of Diane101's young friend Diva from Baghdad to the University of Kansas. What a trip!

You already know how kind and helpful ManEegee was to Diva when she and her fellow Fulbright scholars went there for a week of orientation. She thinks he is the greatest, which is no surprise to us.

You might say that Diane handed her off to ManEegee, who then handed her off to me when I picked her up at the Kansas City airport this past Saturday night. I drove her to Lawrence and got her installed in a dorm room provided for her until her own studio apartment is ready. The minute I saw her I liked her, as Diane and ManEe had told me I would. She is delightful. She speaks English like a native--okay, better than a lot of natives, and she's also fluent in Italian.  She's vivacious, articulate, and beautiful, and so so grateful for all the help.

She fended for herself through Sunday and Monday, making friends and going through a lot of orientation.  Today I drove back to Lawrence, this time taking with me a friend who used to live there and who knows the town and university much better than I do. My friend, Andie, was wonderful today! She directed us where we needed to go, nabbed the right people to ask the right questions, and just generally was helpful in ways I could never have been.  We worked on getting Diva a cell phone, took her to see her apartment (it's cute and she likes it) and to get the leasing paperwork finished, and we got info on bus passes, etc.  We got a lot done, but there's still a lot to do. We felt sorry for all the foreign students who didn't have us!! Or, rather, I felt sorry for all of them who didn't have Andie.

Her first few days have been tough--confusing, exhausting, HOT. She misses her mom. It's just hard in so many ways, but she's a fighter and an amazing person and she's coping. As Andie said to her just before we left her today, "This week will probably be the hardest week you ever have in this country. After this week, everything will start to get easier."

I'll go up Thursday to get her moved into the apartment and we'll go shopping for cool stuff.  A friend of mine sent $100 to help with that, and another friend sent $25.  Andie is giving her a small microwave and probably a tv.

Two amazing bits of synchronicity happened today that I just loved. We were standing in the cell phone shop in the student union when my son walked in! Totally unplanned. So they got to meet, which made me happy.  And then guess what? It turns out Diva will live right across the street from him! Can you believe that? In this big campus, with so much different housing, the house he will be living in with his friends turns out to be across the street and just down a bit from Diva's apartment. Six degrees. . .

SHE NEEDS A COMPUTER! Fulbright gives her a $500 stipend to buy one, but we all know that's not enough. She needs a laptop that can do photoshop, because she'll be studying photography along with American studies. We'll work on getting her one from this end, but if any of you can help, please jump right in. You can email me at Nanpickard at kc.rr.com

So, that's the news from sunny Kansas, where we all love Diva.

 

GOOD THURSDAY, BOOTRIBBERS!

Come on in! The Coffee's Hot!

Something for Everybody!

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*Depending on your time zone.

 

GOOD MORNING,* BOOTRIBBERS!

Come on in!
It's Almost Friday!
*Depending on your time zone.

Hi, All,
    I'm not going to be able to extend these diaries over as long a time as I had planned, though that doesn't mean we can't all continue the conversation in other ways, or later. But for now, I'm going to give you a quickie list of "the "fours'" from Peace Pilgrim's pamphlet. What you will read in cursory form below is what it took her fifteen years to do. If you want to read about them in more detail, there's a website link below. I will be happy to answer any questions about them, if I can.
    One more thing I will do, I hope, is post a wrap-up diary where I'll review what I set out to do with this series, and you can say what you got out of it, or not.
    In the meantime, thanks, and. . .Peace. :)
kansas

Sick of peace yet?  :)

Sweetness and light can be sooo annoying.

You ain't seen nothin' yet. If you didn't feel annoyed, or possibly even threatened, by anything that went before in this series, you may find your peace capacity tested over the final days of this series as we set out Peace Pilgrim's 4 Preparations, 4 Purifications, & 4 Relinquishments.

What she says next sounds incredibly simplistic.

Please, we want to say, it can't be that simple.

I think that's true, and not true. It could be that simple if we just did it, but nooooo.  So for 99.9% of us, it's not that simple.  If it were, we would all be doing it and there would be peace on earth. Ha. So maybe saying it is easy, but doing it is hard. She keeps telling us that, but excuse me, I didn't hear you.

As you read these first two of what she calls The Four Preparations (just wait until we get to the purifications!), I suggest keeping a few things in mind:

l. It worked for her.

2. It took a long time.
   
3. It was hard.
   
4. She thought it could work for anybody.
   
5. It's the same as, or very close to, almost all other "peace paths."
   
6. She's saying it the best way she knew how, and directing it to an audience of millions of people of varying degrees of sophistication and intelligence. (Sometimes I have to laugh, thinking she may have had to simplify it the most for sophisticated people.)

I have taken mercy on you and have edited a bit to shorten it.

Ordinarily, you probably wouldn't read a George Will column in the Washington Post unless you were stuck in a bathroom with nothing else to read, but you've just got to make an exception today. It's hilarious, and in a good way.

Here's how it starts. . .

Before evolution produced creatures of our perfection, there was a three-ton dinosaur, the stegosaurus, so neurologically sluggish that when its tail was injured, significant time elapsed before news of the trauma meandered up its long spine to its walnut-size brain. This primitive beast, not the dignified elephant, should be the symbol of House Republicans.

Yes, one should not taint all of them because of the behavior of most of them.

Except for a couple of zingers at "liberals," it just gets better, including this:

House Republicans, perhaps emboldened by the examples of Afghanistan and Iraq, are going to risk elections.

Enjoy: LINK:   WaPo.

(Please do not recommend this diary. Enjoy and then let it slide. Thanks.)

I promise there won't be so much text to read for the rest of the series!

I'm going to speak personally, among friends, here. I hope you won't mind if I refer to you by "name." Your comments in these diaries are so thought-full that I feel that almost any one of them could be the basis for a diary of its own. Since yesterday, for instance, I've been thinking about sbj's idea that "peace is a verb," and that you can't have too much compassion and brotherhood in the world. I have been mulling supersoling's desire for "change for many. Now." And Katiebird's and Second Nature's honest confessions of a fear that a lot of people have, which is that life may "call" us to do exactly what we're the most scared to do, and "ask" us to give up what we cherish most. Tampopo illuminated how Peace's description of the energy she felt is the exact opposite of being "burned-out." Ductape Fatwa pointed out that while we are not all cut out to follow Peace's exact path, we are all cut out to be able to make a decision not to hate in this moment. Songbh was struck by the fact that Peace didn't do it over-night, that 15 years of hard training preceded her walk. Wilderness wench said that when she reads about other people's self-realization, what jumps out at her is, first of all, the fact that they successfully engaged in the process, and second, how they "measure" their progress.

I could go on here doing nothing but quoting you back at yourselves, but I need to give Peace a chance to talk again. Here is the next short section from the pamphlet we're using as a launching pad for our own thoughts, worries, fears, aggravations, resentments, hopes, conflicts, dreams, actions, ideas about peace. At one time or another, she had all of those, too. Martin Luther King Jr. was frightened a lot of the time (it makes my heart ache just to type that), but still he marched. The Dalai Lama has lived through the genocide, direct and evilly indirect, of his people, and he's still able to laugh and rub noses with Barbara Walters (!). Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison, and emerged in serenity to lead his nation. Peace's path appears more modest, but I think that her very "ordinariness" makes her seem maybe a bit more accessible to the rest of us who have our own paths that are different from all of theirs.

(In the following excerpt, the boldfaced emphasis is mine.)

For just a moment, imagine that it's early morning of an ordinary day. Maybe the sun is shining, or maybe the sky is cloudy. Let's say it is fairly warm outside, with perhaps a light breeze. On this imaginary morning, you have arisen from sleep in a bedroom of a relative's home, because you have sold your own house. You have also sold or given away all of your possessions except for what you are wearing--tennis shoes, blue trousers, and a dark blue tunic--and what you are carrying in the pockets of your tunic: a pen, a toothbrush, a map, and a comb. Oh, and you are also carrying three petitions: one for peace in a certain troubled part of the world, one for the establishment of a national Peace Department, and a third for increasing world prosperity by decreasing armaments.

You open the front door.

You take your first step outside.

You are 45 years old, the year is 1953, you are a woman. You are divorced, you have no children. Many of your family and friends have turned their backs on you because of what you are about to do: You are going to "walk for peace." There is war in Korea, it is the McCarthy era, nobody has heard of Betty Friedan. Prior to this mission of yours, you were already quite a walker, having been the first woman ever to walk the entire Appalachian Trail by yourself in one trip. You have been preparing for this moment for fifteen years, or perhaps for your whole life. You carry no money on you, not a penny. You have no credit cards, no bank account, no source of income. (When you begin to get speaking engagements, you will never accept payment for them.) You have vowed never to ask for food or lodging, but only to accept whatever may be offered to you. By the time of your death 28 years later, you will have walked so far for peace that you will have stopped counting the miles when you reached 25,000. You will be jailed for vagrancy. You will be investigated by the FBI. But you will never be ill, you will never go more than four meals without being offered food. You will sleep by the side of roads when you have to, but more often you will rest in the homes of strangers who approach you because they are curious about, or because they are drawn to, the words on your tunic. On the front, it says your new name: Peace Pilgrim. On the back it says your goal: WALKING COAST TO COAST FOR PEACE, and later; 25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE.

On this imaginary day, take your second step, put a smile on your face, and then keep walking. This is now your life.

And now,here is Peace Pilgrim, in her own words, in the first section of the pamphlet we will be dissecting this week and next.

Series Introduction: LINK:
TODAY: What does it feel like to be at peace?
TUESDAY: The message is old; it's the practice of it that's new.
WEDNESDAY: The Four Preparations
THURSDAY: Preparations, continued
FRIDAY: The Four Purifications
SECOND WEEK: The Four Relinquishments

Our goal is to observe how one peaceful person did it, in the hope of strengthening in ourselves the inner peace and conviction from which meaningful action in the world arises.

And speaking of action, here's a link to BostonJoe's current diary. LINK:: Picket for Peace.

We are a people who long for peace.  Peace in the world, peace in our country, peace in our own hearts. And yet we often feel anything but peaceful, and we often act and react in ways that seem antithetical to the thing we say we want the most: Peace. It  often seems as if the things we say and do produce effects that are exactly opposite of the peace we say we want. We, as much as anyone else, seem to be able to make people mad, instead of peaceful; we seem capable of filling other people's hearts with hatred, scorn, rage.  We seem to be able to hurt others, and to be hurt by them, all the while we keep saying and believing that all we want is peace.

Are we doing something wrong?  Are there better ways to accomplish peace?

When I have big questions like that, I turn to people who live now, or have lived, as exemplars of better ways.  

There have been, there are now, peaceful people in this world.  How did they-how do they--do it? Their inner peace seems to radiate out from them and touch the hearts of people they encounter, so they seem to spread at least temporary peace wherever they go, giving people who are in turmoil a taste of what real peace is like.

Can we do that, too? Can we touch our hearts, our family's hearts, the hearts of friends and enemies so that peace walks where we walk?

I believe so, but I also believe that peace must be the thing we want the most, over anything else in life.  I believe that to live peace we must be willing to "sacrifice" anything within us that is not peaceful. Because I believe that, I look for help in how to do it. To that end, I search for and then study and try to emulate my betters, my "elder brothers" and "elder sisters" who have stepped out ahead of me, ahead of all of us, to follow the path of peace, and who then generously look back to tell us exactly how they did it, so that we may find the inspiration and encouragement to do it, too.

This series

There is a little pamphlet that is one of my "Bibles." It is called Steps Toward Inner Peace and it is offered free of copyright by the woman who was/is known as Peace Pilgrim. Starting Monday, and for every day after that until we finish,I am going to reprint that entire booklet here at BooMan, bit by bit, so those who are interested can read along with me and study how an ordinary woman became a living, walking (definitely walking!) mentor for peace.

I hope you will join me on this journey of reading and discussion that is intended to lead to peace-filled action in the world.  My hope is that by the end of it we, ourselves, will be further along the way toward the peace we say we want more than anything else in the world, for the world, and which I believe we do want. Our goal in doing this will be a good one: to align our words with our actions, our hopes with our hearts, and to be the peace the world needs so desperately now.

Coming Monday: the first of our Steps Toward Peace.

(Reprinted, with permission, from the pamphlet)

Peace Pilgrim 1908-1981

On her pilgrimage from 1953 to 1981:

A pilgrimage is a gentle journey of prayer and example.  My walking is first of all a prayer for peace.  If you give your life as a prayer you intensify the prayer beyond all measure.

    Peace Pilgrim walked more than 25,000 miles across this country spreading her message- "This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."  Carrying in her tunic pockets her only possessions, she vowed, "I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food."  She talked with people on dusty roads and city streets, to church, college, civic groups, on TV and radio, discussing peace within and without.

    Her pilgrimage covered the entire peace picture: peace among nations, groups, individuals, and the very important inner peace-because that is where peace begins.

    She believed that world peace would come when enough people attain inner peace.  Her life and work showed that one person with inner peace can make a significant contribution to world peace.

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Free beer tonight.

Coffee & Tea on tap, too.