Starstruck in the Starbucks' Drive-thru

I almost ran down an elderly woman at the Starbucks' drive-thru the other morning. I didn’t mean to. She was wearing a bright orange t-shirt so it wasn’t like she was hard to see. It was kind of the shirt’s fault, actually. The shirt said something about Guantanamo in big black letters across her sunken chest. Not being a fan of poorly run military prisons, that jerked my attention off the road. I was trying to read the shirt and sip my grande nonfat vanilla rooibos latte and drive the car at the same time. You see the problem. Maybe it was payback for patronizing a huge corporate giant instead of my usual neighborhood barista. I don’t know. Luckily, neither of us was moving too fast.

 I have to say, I was immediately suspicious of her. In my small part of the world, you just don’t find that many old ladies sporting t-shirts that say Guantanamo in big black letters and end on a positive note. (And I say old ladies in the most admiring way.) Squinting recklessly into the sunlight, past the glare of her glowing shirt, I saw what it actually said was: CLOSE GUANTANAMO NOW! Relaxing, I braked and called out my window, “Hey, I like your shirt!” Not knowing how close I’d come to killing her, she ambled trustingly up to my van. And it turned out that this lovely person not only wanted Guantanamo closed but she also wanted a little something called World Peace. My kind of lady! So badly, in fact, was she yearning for peace that she was walking 1,000 miles throughout New England with a handful of other folks on a Peace Walk. 1,000 miles in about 50 days.

I was star-struck. I guess we were holding the other travellers in the Starbucks drive-thru hostage for a bit.. me grasping this delightful woman’s hands through my window... her telling me all about the Peace Walk. That is, until an extremely helpful, small man wearing a Just Do It t-shirt made it his business to let me know I needed to get the hell out of the way. So I just zipped my Eurovan into a spot and hopped out with a big happy bubble in my stomach.

 You know how when you’re on a subway car and the insane person onboard starts talking very, very loudly and everyone is suddenly horribly uncomfortable and looking at the floor and pretending he doesn’t exist except he definitely does exist and you‘re all trapped together in a poorly ventilated space? But then, all of a sudden, he says something absolutely spot-on true and you want to cackle out loud at the craziness of life but you’re afraid because then he’ll probably sit down right next to you and maybe even follow you home? So you don’t know what to do but then you happen to look up into the kind eyes of the stranger across the car from you and you both smile a tiny smile because you both just get it and it’s such a relief to know someone else onboard gets the weirdness and wonder of it all? Well, that’s how I felt in the Starbucks' parking lot. These people were my tribe!

 It turned out the woman in the orange shirt was the driver for the New England Pilgrimage for Peace (www.peacewalk-newengland.com.). There were four more walkers there in the car: one from Nicaragua who was looking at a map, a young woman who was trying to take a nap in the backseat and two seniors who were standing in the parking lot in their stocking feet cutting pieces of moleskin to fit in their shoes. They all looked kind of worn out except for the lady I‘d almost run over who was the oldest of them all. She was positively perky. They’d spent the previous night sleeping at a church. Already up and walking for hours, they were on their way to a town about 10 miles away. I asked if they needed anything. Nope. Could I get them anything? No thanks. Were they taking donations? They demurred. Finally, kind of grudgingly, they said I could buy a t-shirt if I really wanted to. So I did.

I gave them a $25 donation in exchange for the t-shirt, which was designed by friends in Nicaragua, and told them how I believed in peace too. I shared some of the small things I do to work for peace and justice and thanked them for their undertaking. They listened closely and what they really wanted to know more about was me. Me? Yes! They were very curious. What was I doing? What did I think? How did I keep from getting discouraged? Were there other people who thought like me in my little town? Where did I find like-minded people? Then…Come join us if you’d like! Walk a few miles with us. Bring the kids. Anytime! Gratified, I took their picture because I wanted to record this moment of serendipity. Then one of them gave me the greatest hug. Not the kind where you barely pat someone on the back. Or the kind where the person leans in stiffly with their upper body. Just the really good warm kind. And then they were off! Leaving Starbucks in their dust.

  

 Wow, I thought, after they left. Who were those people? Did I just imagine that? Maybe you live in Berkeley, California or Cambridge, Massachusetts where people of all stripes gather for all kinds of reasons every day of the week. I don’t. I live in a small New England town. The biggest gatherings are for church fairs and town picnics. This felt a little bit like a miracle to me. I’d asked them if the local paper had known they were in town. No, they’d replied seeming unconcerned. The minister who’d hosted them said that maybe she’d write an article and then possibly submit it to a paper. She’d taken a picture, they thought. Oh dear, I’d worried. Didn’t they want publicity? Didn’t they know how these things worked? How were people supposed to find out about them? Not everybody’s as nosy as me. I mean they didn’t even seem to have signs, for god’s sake!

  

And then I read their mission statement:

The 2009 Pilgrimage for Peace is an opportunity for a group of interfaith walkers to cover an average of 20  miles per day as they wend their way through all six New England states, meeting with multi-faith communities, peace groups, schools, retirement communities, and others along the way.

Participants will walk approximately 1,000 miles over 50 days. The literal steps are intended to be little steps   for all toward transforming themselves and recognizing that peace starts with them.

The goal is to have conversations at the gatherings to determine how people feel they can best achieve peace   in a world that is distressed, discouraged, and struggling—either for themselves or for those around them or in other parts of the world that bear more than their share of challenges.

These folks were pilgrims. Pilgrims for peace. They weren’t so much concerned with who knew about them as with who they met along the way. A pilgrimage is a journey of great moral significance. It’s not about making headlines necessarily. Making connections and allowing themselves and others to be affected by the experience was more important to them….like what just happened in the parking lot of Starbucks. Of course, there is so much nuts and bolts work to be done for peace and justice. Wars to be stopped. Prejudices to be overcome. Economies to be fixed. Governments to be overhauled. Bellies to be filled. Entire societies to be changed. It’s overwhelming. Sometimes you just have to take a few steps. And then a few more. And see who you meet along the way. And listen to they have to say. Then rest and decide what to do next.

So I’m grateful we crossed paths that day. It restored my faith just a little bit. I hope I gave them some encouragement. I sure tried. And it truly felt meant to be. Sound a little crazy? Well, sometimes you've got to be that crazy person on the subway car. Sometimes you just gotta slam on the brakes and hop right out of your van. Talk to strangers. Read their shirts. Grasp their hands. And try not to run them over.