Pilgrim For Peace -- Traveling Messenger Asks Seattle To Search Its Soul

You can't help but smile when the white-haired gentleman with the twinkling eyes thrusts out his hand and introduces himself as Peace Pilgrim II.

"Hi, Peace," people invariably say, their faces creasing into something between a grin and a chuckle.

Dressed in a blue tunic with "Peace Pilgrim II" on the front and "Peace Is Caring" on the back, he's not unaware of his name's effect on others.

"When you call me`Peace,' it reminds you to be peaceful. And it is an affirmation for me to remain peaceful, also," he says.

For the past six weeks, he was in the Seattle area to spread his direct and simple message: Everyone knows the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you; now it's time to live by it.

With the recent TWA and Centennial Olympic Park explosions and the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building last year, it is more incumbent than ever for Americans to make peace their No. 1 priority, he said.

Nearly seven years ago, he gave up all his possessions and began traveling around the United States and Canada on foot and by car to spread his message.

He followed in the footsteps of the original Peace Pilgrim, Mildred Ryder of New Jersey, who walked more than 25,000 miles as a penniless pilgrim from 1953 to 1981. She made several trips to Seattle during her 28-year journey.

Now 70, Peace Pilgrim II has logged tens of thousands of miles himself. Like his predecessor, he has given up his name, background and material comforts. (He was born Ronald Podrow in London, immigrated to the United States in 1954 and worked as a buyer for a wholesale diamond company before he retired.)

Politely trying to steer questions from himself to his mission, he says the message of peace is more important than its messenger.

Asked if he's being a little Quixotic thinking he'll have any effect on world peace traveling from community to community, speaking to school, church and neighborhood groups, he responds: "I've been told I'm a dreamer, that we'll never have peace.My response to that is, `You are absolutely right. As long as that is what you believe, we will not have peace.' "

He talks of the unconditional love of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and all the others who have strived for peace.

He also talks of modern commercialism and how it has taught people that if they don't feel good, they should go out and buy something to make themselves feel better.

"We need to soul search," he said. Rather than materialism, people need love, companionship and community. They need to get their values in order.

If their house caught on fire, he noted, people wouldn't risk their lives to save their jewelry, but they would go back in to save their children, or their cats and dogs.

Similarly, people will band together in times of tragedy, from floods and earthquakes to terrorist bombings.

"We need to come together all the time," and not just rely"on the tragedies to bring us together," he said.

He began his peace journeys on Oct. 2, 1989, in Eugene, Ore. He was walking in a park when he heard what he called an inner voice telling him he was to be Peace Pilgrim II.

In his first year, he said, he walked 2,000 miles before his hips gave out. He now has metal hips and travels in a 1987-vintage automobile with 140,000 miles-plus on the odometer.

He said he does not subscribe to a particular faith or denomination. In fact, Peace Pilgrim II, whose wife died in 1975, said one of his sons, a Christian, chides him for giving only half a message, for failing to say that Jesus Christ died for people's sins and is the way to salvation.

"That is not important to me," he said. "What is important is the unconditional love that he (Jesus) taught and practiced."

Peace Pilgrim II said he considers himself "extremely spiritual." He is open to all religions and believes Jesus or the Messiah arrived in his heart upon his recognition of unconditional love.

The original Peace Pilgrim also eschewed formal religious affiliation, though she had attended Quaker meetings in Philadelphia and had a profound religious experience upon a mountaintop in New England after traversing the Appalachian Trail in 1952. She understood she would never come down from the mountain spiritually, and that she was to walk from coast to coast as Peace Pilgrim, said her co-biographer, Ann Rush.

"The fact that she didn't belong to anything makes her more universal," said Rush, who with her husband, John, runs the Peace Pilgrim Center in Hemet, Calif. "People from all around the world, from different religions and nationalities, find spiritual truth in her words," she said.

Fifteen years after Peace Pilgrim was killed in a car accident while being driven to a speaking engagement in Indiana, the center continues to get requests for her biography, "Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words," and a 32-page pamphlet of hers, "Steps Toward Inner Peace," said Rush.

That one person can make a difference is evidenced by the fact that the center has distributed more than 1 million copies of the pamphlet and more than 40,000 copies of the biography, all without charge, said Rush. Many of the requests come from people in Seattle, she said.

Rush said she has met and talked with Peace Pilgrim II on a number of occasions. "He is a very kind man," she said, though acknowledging, "We would have been happier if he had used a T-shirt we had, which said`Another Pilgrim for Peace.' " Some people have been unhappy that he has taken up the Peace Pilgrim name, while others have found being with him to be "a very wonderful experience," she said.

Peace Pilgrim II stressed he is not the only one working for peace, nor did he really have anything new to offer. But he is walking the talk, literally, and he says others should, too, whether it is continuing to work for an end to military armaments or working with youths who are being drawn to gang violence or simply being kind to others.

"What needs to happen is for people to take personal responsibility and recognize that `peace begins with me,' " he said.

Living on Social Security and offers of food and accommodations by people he's met along the way, he has authored his own book, "Enjoying the Journey - the Adventures, Travels and Teachings of Peace Pilgrim II," published by Blue Dolphin Publishing in Nevada City, Calif.

He will be in British Columbia through the middle of the month, then plans to travel through Calgary, Winnipeg and Chicago before heading to Florida by the end of the year.