c. 1998 Religion News Service

LEVERETT, MASS. _ A year ago, Mariah L. Richardson was a Master of Fine Arts student looking for someone to direct the play she had just written.

A friend suggested Ingrid C. Askew, who agreed to take on the project. But two weeks later, the play was shelved _ at least temporarily _ and Richardson found herself taking a year off from her studies to join a project of Askew’s _ the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage.

The pilgrimage, a yearlong trek that began here Saturday (May 30) to re-trace in reverse the route of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Underground Railroad, was organized by Askew and the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist order.

Why the sudden life-changing decision?”I think racism is stupid,”said Richardson, an African-American.”And I always knew I needed something that I could give back to the world.” Richardson’s experience is typical of the more than 60″sojourners”who came for the pilgrimage’s inaugural ceremony Saturday from as far away as California, Japan and Bulgaria to launch a walk that will take them through some 13,000 miles to more than 20 countries.

The pilgrimage began at the New England Peace Pagoda, a towering monument rising in the woods of this rural town, amid a flurry of inspirational speeches, prayers, tears and songs. Before the ceremony, the group underwent a three-day orientation to focus on the matter at hand _ confronting the reality of racism and learning how to be healed of it.

Pilgrimages are often part of religious experience, particularly for the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhists, the sect of the Japanese Nichiren school who organized a 1994 walk from Auschwitz to Hiroshima. But the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage is unusual in that it is just that _ deliberately interfaith and racially diverse.

Christians, Jews, Baha’is and other”spiritual”people make up the white, African-American, Asian and American Indian group, which ranges in age from 16 to 62. Together they make an unlikely community of”brothers and sisters”who might never have met if not for the pilgrimage, much less united to confront one of the ugliest legacies of American history.”We have a family now, we have a community to move through the next 12 months,”said Askew, as she bustled about the Pagoda’s residence, supervising walkers who were making paper flowers on the eve of the opening ceremony.

Askew, an African-American, said her heart is already in”Mother Africa.””My lips are going to be chafed and dry from kissing the ground,”she said.

The group is scheduled to land in Senegal in January 1999 and reach Cape Town, South Africa, by May 31, after walking 15 to 20 miles each day from Massachusetts through New York City and Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, then on to several Caribbean islands and Brazil before reaching Africa.

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As Askew steps out to make more arrangements, the flower-makers are exuberant, reflecting the general mood at the pilgrimage’s outset. One walker, 51-year-old Phyllis Robey from Lowell, Mass., recalls with a laugh that she was committed to the pilgrimage from the moment she heard about it.”There was no decision process, it’s sort of like my life feels like it was preparing for this,”said Robey, a Baha’i.

Robey expressed little anxiety about the long journey despite having sold her furniture and leaving children and grandchildren to undertake it. The hardest part for her, she said, will be”sitting on the floors”of the various houses of worship that have arranged shelter for the pilgrims along the journey.

Robey is calm even though the pilgrims have yet to secure a ship to carry them from New Orleans to the Caribbean islands in November, nor have the trek’s organizing committees confirmed food and shelter arrangements past Washington.

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Like Askew, most of the walkers said they are traveling for personal spiritual and political reasons with the goal of eradicating both the pain of being victimized by racism and the guilt of perpetrating it.”I grew up racist,”said Skip Schiel, 57, as he stood the night before the opening ceremony in the dining room of First Congregational Church in nearby Amherst, waiting with fellow walkers for a soon-to-be-familiar meal of salads, beans and lasagna prepared by church volunteers.

Schiel, who is white, left his apartment, partner and two daughters behind in Cambridge, Mass., and joined the pilgrimage hoping to transform what he said were the racist ideas he was taught as a child in Chicago.”Going on this pilgrimage is a way of bridging the difference between the way I was raised and the community that lives there now,”he said, referring to the fact his old neighborhood is almost entirely black today.

Schiel’s sentiment was prevalent among the whites at the opening ceremony, who often wept loudly, overcome with the largeness of their undertaking and the visual diversity of the crowd.

The ceremony, which was attended by some 700 supporters, began with traditional Buddhist chanting and drumming, as participants offered incense before Buddhist and African altars and circled the Peace Pagoda, which was adorned with colorful flags and the paper flowers constructed by the walkers.

A steady stream of speakers told the walkers their journey was going to be difficult, even dangerous, but the understanding they would gain was worth the risk.”Let the word go forth here and now from this Peace Pagoda in Leverett,Massachusetts, that we are here to inaugurate not just a march but a moral, political and spiritual awakening, not just in this nation but in the world,”said Cornel West, Harvard Divinity School professor and well-known author on race relations.”This issue of evil is serious,”West said, rousing the crowd to its feet with his powerful speaking style.”We will not allow misery to have the last word.” (OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS. STORY MAY END HERE.)

Other speakers included Native American activist Ramona Peters and poet Sonya Sanchez and David DuBois, whose father W.E.B. DuBois was one of the nation’s most prominent African-American leaders in the early part of the century.

In addition to the speakers, prayers were offered from virtually every world religious tradition, including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and the Baha’i faith.

Peter Salzman, a 23 year-old walker, led the Jewish prayer.”(Judaism’s) got a real prophetic tradition of acting for justice and working toward liberation,”he said in an interview.

Every day of the walk will begin with interfaith worship, and this spirituality has taken on a life of its own in the eyes of the walkers.”What I notice about this group is that they are creating a new spiritual practice,”said Elizabeth R. Turner, a 62-year-old Roman Catholic from Oakland, Calif. She said she is frustrated with the”doctrinal”nature of Catholic worship and finds spiritual comfort in joining the Buddhist monks in their chanting as the crowd, now down to 250, navigated the first five miles of the walk to a Quaker meeting house in Leverett.

The group walked down one lane of a busy road, escorted by police, as they will every day for the next year. Some walkers said they were surprised at how tired they felt, others simply walked meditatively to the drumbeat, chanting softly to themselves. Still others chatted happily toward the back of the crowd, mostly about issues of race and healing but sometimes about more mundane matters.

As the walkers approached their first destination, Richardson said she knew the interfaith, interracial group might attract hatred and violence along the journey.”We’re a walking target,”she said.”But if we are disciplined and we are in accordance and our intent is correct, when we move through we won’t have to worry too much.”I’m going to make it, I plan to make it,”she added confidently.

DEA END LEBOWITZ