(For other essays, see <www.brightworks.com/quaker/midpas.html> and for general information about the Pilgrimage, see <www.interfaithpilgrimage.com> To reach me by email: skipschiel@gmail.com. Or by snail-mail: 9 Sacramento St, Cambridge MA 02138. Comments appreciated.)
In college, I trained to be an electrical engineer, learned words like differential equation, sinusoidal wave, capacitor, diode, triode, transistor, microchip. I practiced ways of transforming energy. At my peak, age 22, I could convert direct current into alternating, derive electrical power from solar, move ultra- high frequency electromagnetic waves into an electromagnet driving a loudspeaker cone, producing Beethoven, and exercise other feats of will and ingenuity highly regarded by our society. All empirical and practical. Methods that sold. I could earn money with my skills, benefit society, play a vital role.
One day, while working between college semesters as a student engineer, I read the philosopher, Kierkegaard. In his day, turn of the 19th century into the 20th, he realized that many people were devoting their lives to making the lives of others easier, with methods that would sell. General Electric: "We make life better." And he decided to dedicate his life to making lives a tad more difficult, in his case, by asking key questions of existence.
I was impressed, thought this over, felt my many problems with engineering come to a head, and decided: enough of engineering for me, I too would find ways to challenge others. Gradually I found a path, based in art, education, prayer, voluntarily endured suffering, and serving others. Not to make lives easier to live, but relieving suffering, healing the wounded, building bridges, achieving understanding, making whole the fragmented.
And so now, on the Middle Passage Pilgrimage, I find myself-I can't speak for the others-an engineer of the spirit. I seek to transform energy. I do this by witnessing at sites of lynching, incarceration, starvation, massacre. With others, I offer prayers, songs, stories. Some of us fast. We all walk. We rejoice at underground railroad sites. We exult at places of resistance.
We are not only present in history but we attempt to change its legacy. We prayed at the Mystic Connecticut landing site of the ship, Amistad. On Pequot Hill in Groton, scene of the Pequot massacre of 1637, we heard how colonials shot, burned and stabbed the Native people, the first of a series of killings that culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee, some 250 years later. Nearby, instruments of a potential massacre are being built: Trident submarines at Electric Boat. At the site of the killing of Metacomet (AKA King Philip), one of the leaders of the last East Coast armed resistance to whites, near Newport Rhode Island, we heard from Romona Peters, a Wampanoag person, how Metacomet's head was put on a pike in Plymouth in 1676 as an example of what would happen to any opposition to white rule.
Together, the 40-50 pilgrims now on the road attempt to sense the spirit, bring it to awareness, change it. Suffering helps. We've walked thru the deluge of early June, soaked. Struggle helps. We ponder what to do when white people correct black people in inappropriate ways. We deliberate. Do we walk too little, tour too much? How balance our walking and talking, being on the road, being in the pew? We revel. At one of our earlier evening programs, children led us in the song, Ain't Gonna Let No One Turn Us Around. Hearing this, singing this, our "minds stayed on freedom," we spontaneously leapt to our feet, those tired, bruised, callused, blistered feet, and danced around the church, children in the lead.
For me, electrical engineering had verifiable outcomes. I could measure the amperes, volts, wattage, hertz of my manipulations. On pilgrimage, no such measurement is possible. We act, faithful to the call, the commission: uncover hidden history, end racism, walk our talk. We do it now, a step at a time, each step a prayer, each lesson an invocation for growth. A time of revelation. New energy.