One Of The Most Amazing People You've Never Heard Of

I've met a lot of really amazing people in my life, people who excelled at riding bikes, riding skateboards, making TV shows, making music, and other talents.  I've also come across stories of people who just plain blow my mind.  Peace Pilgrim was one of those people.  On the surface, she seems like some crazy old lady.  But the more I learned about her, the more amazing she seemed.

Late in her life, in 1953, she decided to dedicate her life to teaching people about peace; peace among nations, peace among groups, peace among individuals, and inner peace.  Nothing too amazing there.  There are plenty of people who think peace is important.  What sets Peace Pilgrim apart from anyone else is how she went about teaching people about peace.  She dropped her given name, took on the name Peace Pilgrim, and decided to walk across the U.S. as a pilgrim, teaching people she met about peace wherever she went.  Here's where it gets amazing.  She had no support crew of any kind.  She had no backpack.  She HAD NO COAT.  She had only the clothes she wore, the pair of shoes she wore, and a tunic that said Peace Pilgrim on the front, and "walking 25,000 miles for peace" on the back.  She started her pilgrimage in 1953.  She walked until given shelter and fasted until given food.  Read that last sentence again.  Her journey was a complete leap of faith.  She slept wherever she wound up each night, though usually she was offered a place for the night.  If no one offered her food, she didn't eat.  Period.  She walked from 1953 until her death in 1982.  No supplies.  No support crew.  No coat.  She walked in all 50 states.  She walked well over 50,000 miles.  She would often walk fifty miles in a day, in her late years in life, frustrating people who tried to walk along with her for a day. 

People she met bought her clothes and shoes and let her borrow a typewriter to write, or stamps to mail letters.  She usually turned down offers of shoes and clothes, until those items were absolutely necessary.  Over the years, she gave many talks and interviews to a wide variety of groups, and a group developed, called Friends of Peace Pilgrim, to spread her message worldwide through pamphlets, videos, a book, and ultimately the documentary above.  She gained the respect of prominent people around the world for her work, despite doing absolutely no promotion of her own.  She even got detained by the FBI in the early years of her pilgrimage, because they thought she might be a Communist or something.

Nearly everyone in my new Facebook group knows people that have done amazing physical feats over the years.  But there are other people in the world, both now and in the past, that have achieved things on a whole different level.  Peace Pilgrim is one of those people.  If this blog post has piqued your interest, watch the documentary above or check out the Friends of Peace Pilgrim website.  I highly recommend that everyone reads  her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace.  It's available to read on the website, or you can order the pamphlets for free.  Friends of Peace Pilgrim does accept donations to cover the costs of providing books and pamphlets around the world for free.