STONEWALK USA 1999 Sherborn, MA to Arlington, VA:

Harvard Divinity School Field Education Report Simon Augustine,
Intern The Peace Abbey, Summer 1999

This past summer, the bulk of my divinity school field education experience with The Peace Abbey was spent conducting the Stonewalk project. It turned out to be one of the most unique and powerful experiences of my life - challenging me in many of the ways I had anticipated, but sometimes beyond what I could have imagined. There are so many moments worth remembering and recording, far more than I could describe in this short space. So I only hope to convey a basic sense of what happened, and touch upon a few of those moments that remain especially vivid. I believe it is an ironic testament to our journey that it became the kind of event that could never be satisfactorily described to someone who was not there; the predominant feeling among those who participated is that you had to have actually walked with us to fully understand Stonewalk. But I say "ironic" because, at the same time, Stonewalk was designed to be for every American, a gesture that could extend far beyond the simple pilgrimage itself, to speak of peace and reconciliation to each person who heard about it. A spirit of unity and sharing was created "along the bars" of the caisson carrying the stone unlike anything of which I have ever been a part. It was this spirit that magnetically pulled strangers into our endeavor, and then kept them returning to walk with us over and over again - miraculously, sometimes over days, and even weeks. In times, here and there, of quiet respite, I often found myself wondering: is this the same spirit, the same atmosphere, that characterized the hope and promise of the sixties, which I have seen tenuously alive back in the tranquil confines of the Abbey, and which sadly faded away in the years just after I was born? I am now glimpsing a brief taste of that magical vigilance?

We pulled the memorial stone for "Unknown Civilians Killed in War" through eight states, covering five hundred miles of terrain in 34 days, without a day off, averaging about 15 miles a day, and ending in Washington just as planned. Amazingly, we only got behind schedule once, in Connecticut - and then by only about 4 miles. We had what we called a "core group" - those people making the entire journey from start to finish - of just six, of which I was one. The six of us (somewhere along the way, to our bemusement, we were christened "Stonewalkers"); became close in many ways, since during this time we functioned as a kind of traveling family, with peripheral members of varying degrees of involvement joining and re-joining in different places.

For me, perhaps the most memorable and gratifying part of the journey occurred during the actual physical work of pulling the stone with others. The times when there were only a few of us, anywhere from six to twelve people total, were incredibly intense. We would slowly, with a certain giddy dread, approach a big hill, and then go into a kind of daze of physical concentration for as long as two hours, as we worked slowly on pulling (or, turned around on the bars, pushing) the caisson foot by foot. Often rock and roll music and protest songs blared out of the speakers on the caisson, with pullers shouting encouragement to each other over it, and our bodies would be drenched and dripping with sweat as we moved laboriously up the grade. With the level of energy and cooperation created, these uphills were often electrifying. In the late afternoons, after a hard day, when the sun became soft, our reward was the pleasant delirium that would set in from exhaustion. It was an almost spiritual "spaciness": our bodies were so tired, we didn’t even have the energy to think, and the result was that our minds became incredibly clear and relaxed. Sometimes what can be difficult to realize through long hours of meditation can be gained instead by dragging a huge rock up and down hills for hours on end!

We mostly stayed in church parking lots and at Quaker meeting houses along the route (in the RV that was our traveling home). One morning we even had the chance to attend a Quaker meeting a group. One of the striking things was how accommodating and generous people were to us everywhere we went. People in each state put up members of Stonewalk at their house for the night, treated us to dinner, and helped us anyway they could (in one instance even giving a couple of us haircuts!) I observed first hand that when strangers see you are working hard for a good cause with a pure intention, most will generally do their best to help you out, rising to meet that intention. This held true in the poorest areas as well as the wealthiest ones (except for the western half of Long Island, which for some reason suffered from a unfortunate rash of apathy and indifference).

We became intimate with the landscape through which we passed. The closely juxtaposed disparity of privilege in the Northeast becomes more tangible as one actually walks through each community, from one town to the other without interruption. Beautiful houses and cars, and a general feeling of rushed but pleasant contentment, would subtly but eventually give way to abandoned buildings, lots filled with glass and garbage, and a pervasive sense of desperation and frustrated perseverance. I believe one does not really, fully know our country until one begins to actually walk through it. It is an extraordinary thing to be able to do.

We walked across so many different kinds of places, some new, and some familiar, but even the familiar became nevertheless strange by virtue of our mode of travel: over the 59th street bridge in midday traffic, with drivers staring incredulously, honking out of encouragement or annoyance; through Times Square and into the Lincoln Tunnel, which takes on a phantasmagoric quality at three in the morning completely cleared of cars; through Pennsylvania Amish country, with the children of Amish and Mennonite families seemingly arranged in descending size as they peeked out of houses or fields in their black hats and vests, and dresses; through the nightmarish industrial parks of Newark, New Jersey, where a single living creature, or anything organic for that matter, seemed conspicuously absent; over the quiet, beautiful hills of Connecticut and Massachusetts; and through the streets of Washington leading to Capitol Hill. And there are places that almost seem parts of a foreign, if not exactly exotic, land: at one point, we pulled into a county farm fair in Maryland, and, with the caisson parked next to a National Guard promotional display, where kids tended 4H goats and lamas nearby, we spent part of the night with the RV parked literally smack in the middle of a monster truck rally. As rigs sponsored by professional wrestlers, spitting smoke and fire, sped past our windows, actually surrounding us, and the announcer saying things like, "hey folks, lets give a big hand for the Undertaker!" over the loudspeaker, Dot Walsh (another core member, who is a peace chaplain at the Abbey) and I were trapped inside the RV. We ate a meager dinner of greasy fries from a food stand, and somehow reassured and comforted ourselves by heartily cursing the situation like deranged sailors on a leave that wouldn’t end, banded together against a common fate.

As hoped, we were often able in very satisfying ways to spread our message of lost humanity and the potential for peace that inspired the creation and deliverance of the stone. This occurred on both an intimate and more public scale. We garnered good media coverage, appearing in the local paper for every town and county we through which we passed, and held interviews with many local TV stations. We also gained a voice on a national level, making it into the Washington post three days in a row, the New York Times, onto National Public Radio, onto CNN and most local stations in the ABC and CBS networks. On the lawns in front of Capitol Hill I had the opportunity to give a two-hour interview for Voice of America, which broadcasts American news to the rest of the world.

However, it was encounters on a personal scale that were most fulfilling. To our surprise, most people understood and accepted the message without much hesitation, finding it (as we did) obvious and long overdue. Often they became quite enthusiastic about it almost immediately, and spontaneously were inspired to walk and pull with us. In Connecticut, there was a policeman (we had police escort the entire way) who, as soon as he was finished helping us went home, changed to civilian clothes, and brought his wife and child to walk with us the rest of the day. We also met a man who was having his 84th birthday, and convinced him to come out and take 84 steps with us along the route, as we counted them aloud. One particularly memorable person was Dave, a mechanic in Connecticut who just came out of his garage to see what we were up to, and winded up neglecting his customers to stay with Stonewalk three days, at one point even helping us to weld parts together on the caisson!

But it was showing the stone to veterans and people who had been directly affected by war that was most meaningful. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, before taking the ferry to Port Jefferson, New York (where we had an incredible reception of about 250 people arranged by the town), we met a former military lieutenant who had bombed families in Cambodia and Laos. He looked homeless and alcoholic, and approached the Stonewalk procession looking wild-eyed and on the verge of collapse. He seemed to be incredibly worked up by what we were doing, so much so that it took some of us off-guard. As if in the midst of a flashback, each time he addressed himself to someone he kept saluting and announcing his name and rank. The scene was both a little upsetting and grotesque, and profoundly moving. He told us his life had been broken by what he had done during wartime. When we found out that during the war he had had all of his toes blown off by a land mine, we stopped and someone gave him fresh socks so he could walk with us. As he walked in memoriam of the very people he had been responsible for killing, and whose memory had destroyed his own life, a miraculous thing happened: at least for that brief time, some part of him seemed to be healed with each step he took. It was marvelous to watch. By the time we reached the ferry, whereas he had at first been ashen and frightened, now he was actually smiling and having a good time. I will never forget it. In the end, it is people like the lieutenant for whom, to my mind, a pilgrimage like Stonewalk was best intended.

When we arrived in Washington, it became apparent that the stone was not going to make it into Arlington National Cemetery, at least not immediately. A congressman from Massachusetts came out to see the stone. We needed a joint resolution of congress, and despite support from several congressional camps, a bill has yet to be sponsored. We decided to stop halfway across Memorial Bridge, and hand the stone over to the Washington S.W.A.T team to be impounded. This seemed appropriate since the police had been the group perhaps most helpful to us during the walk. A speech was given by Lewis, expressing sorrow that our country could not find a way to receive the gift we had worked so hard to deliver, and also hope that the stone would soon find a home (currently, another Stonewalk is being planned to take place in Ireland and England). There was much sadness, but it was difficult for me to have the least bit of regret or sense of failure, for I had recognized early on that it was the body of the journey itself and not its end goal that was of utmost significance. After being on the bridge we walked as a group to Arlington, visited the graves of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and had a small ceremony on a grassy hill near the changing of the guard, quietly commemorating our achievement.

Overall, as the core group we surprised ourselves at how we were able to meet the challenge of the tasks that Stonewalk required. I learned that when you have strong beliefs invested in what you are doing, even with the most difficult tasks, especially the most difficult tasks, the job is transformed into work of a unique kind. It felt like blessed work, work of grace, work beyond the self, and thus beyond the self’s usual abilities and willingness. Perhaps this is the kind of work that informs genuine ministry. And what I was involved with during Stonewalk felt like a brand of ministry. For the first time in my life I was trying to live out, and share with others in a formalized way, the ideals I have worked to build in my schooling and my life. It was incredible to actually be out on the road, waking up in different communities, praying in front of the stone each morning and evening with shifting groups of people, literally carrying our message through the countryside. It was my first taste of true activism: the organization and dedication it requires, and in turn what it can inspire in other people. It left me wanting more. As Lewis once told me along the route, above all my experience should teach me one thing: in the service of ideals truly and deeply held, in the end it is possible to accomplish whatever we set out to do.