"PEACE MARCH FOR NUCLEUR DISARMANENT, TENTS, COOKIES AND ME!

by Judy Joy Jones


While working as a journalist for a newspaper, I was asked to go on a peace walk across the United States.


I said yes but had no idea it would require me to walk 20 miles a day and put up a  tent every night to sleep in!


For a person who had never stayed anywhere but hotel rooms while traveling, I  panicked!  


Well, after all I told myself,  you will be helping save the world from nucleur disarmanent...but who will teach me how to put up a tent?  Anything having to do with the rugged outdoor life was a foreign object to this artist!


The march lasted a year and I would joining it in the last three months.


Right before I left to join the march, I visited a spiritualist church.  We went around the room introducing ourselves and I explained I was a journalist about to join a peace walk for nucleur disarmanent and write about it for the newspaper.  But I told them, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to put up a tent at night after our 20 mile daily walk and also get my articles written. And I am not registered for the march and I have no tent, I explained.


At that moment the entire congregation gathered around me; lifting up their arms with opened hands and began praying aloud for me.


They asked for me to have all my needs lovingly provided for and said that their prayers would surround me every mile I walked until I safely set foot in Washington D.C., where the march would end.


From that moment on, I felt their loving prayers carrying me to the finish line of the march.  It was a supernatural force and the hands of the unseen joined theirs.


I do not know how I got to that church or even its name.  But the spirit of the people was so powerful, it protected me with a mysterious spiritual strength that to this day is still with me.


My first experience in stepping out in pure faith was so positive, it opened my future to be one where doubts and fears are still there, but also my cherished memories of a journey that taught me to let go of anything that stops me from living each second as if it were my last!


I finished the articles and everyone enjoyed reading them.  I mostly got my tent up ok but when I didn't, I slept in the town hall big tent that in itself is a whole other story!


And I learned from being part of 100 marchers that if I took even one cookie too many I would be scolded by the volunteer cooks for not caring if my fellow marchers had their cookie. Yikes!!!!  Guilt, guilt and more guilt.


May this world please find peace so I don't ever have to put up a tent again!  Wind, rain, snow, heat...whew...never again!!!

But I did love being awakened in the mornings on the march by the magical music of the joyful Tibetian Monks an for the movie stars that appeared now and again to wish us luck and offer marchers big hugs for the days 20 mile journey..


c jj 2021