(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.)
Let me try to picture the Pilgrimage in New York City, processing thru the Bronx and Harlem on a steamy smoggy late June day shortly after solstice. As if sacred drama, as if performance art, as if dream.
When we walk two by two on the sidewalk- at this point we number some 45 pilgrims and sojourners, roughly one fifth black, one fifth Japanese, the rest white-we extend across about five buildings, but when stretched out single file, we can span a half block. In a sea of over ten million people, we are merely a puddle, but when our costumes, accouterments, music, and message are considered, we can roil the waters.
First in line, Kobi and Aaron, two young, vital, black men. They guide us and manage traffic. Smitty follows them with one of the two African national flags colored red, black, and green.
Followed by a contingent of black people, which might include tall slender Tizata, with angular Ethiopian features; Teresa, even taller, thinner, somewhat older, playing an African drum an onlooker gave her when Teresa mentioned how much she admired the drum; Earline, sometimes limping from a back injury, cloaked in a third African national flag. Also Tim, 18 years old, regal, jaunty, vivacious; Kathleen, shaking a tambourine; and perhaps Gilberto, born in Cuba in the 1940s, if he's not at the back of the line joking in Spanish strolling thru Spanish Harlem. New black walkers are invited to join this leading unit of the procession, and help introduce onlookers to our Pilgrimage in New York City.
Next is our banner, ten feet long, three high, reading "The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage." With the emblazoned blue words over black shadowing is the drawing of a slave ship, two Africans, and a flying crescent, from the tempera painting by Tom Feelings. And a brief form of our itinerary: United States, Caribbean, Brazil, West Africa, South Africa, May 31, 1998-May 31, 1999. Three people, usually white, carry the banner. After the banner comes Ramona, a Wampanoag Native person. She wears or holds turkey feathers, and will often burn cedar leaves. Depending on the wind direction, the scent may permeate the length of the line, purifying the city air.
An eight foot high blue flag comes next, the Gondaiki flying
the white Chinese characters of our chant, Namu Myoho Renge
Kyo. Some regard this as a universal prayer for peace and
justice. Carried by the Japanese Buddhist monks and nuns of the
order spawning the Pilgrimage, the flag billows in the wind. Each
monk or nun beats a small hand drum, seven beats to a measure,
four slow, three fast, the chant droned antiphonally, over and
over. And each wears orange or yellow robes over white shirts
and pants. Each is shaved bald. Some might wear towels around
their heads, others a curious white cap with flaps, looking like
bakers' hats.
We look bizarre, mysterious, disarming, not easily deciphered.
Other walkers are free to chant and drum, but must follow immediately behind the nuns and monks to form a cohesive unit. Yet more trail behind in silence or chatting together. Weaker walkers might drop behind but risk being stranded. Two people carrying the final banner might drop back to support them.
So that is the picture, as far as I can convey it. Why call it sacred drama, or performance, or dream?
Sacred drama for me evokes the image of ceremony, antiquity, reenactment, a time before commercial media and automobiles, when people formed processions and with the devices of drama enacted the stories of their ancient teachings: the passion of Christ in the Via Crucis, the life of Rama in the Indian tradition. Our story: the Middle Passage, a journey of historical slavery, with a contemporary twist-racism.
Performance because of our costumes, our voices, our headdresses. Some wear colorful flowing gowns. Some shroud their heads, some are bald, some have flowing dreadlocks. We call out Japanese syllables, which for most people in the United States are meaningless, yet perhaps carry a universal sound and rhythm. I am an actor, becoming or carrying the spirit of an enslaved African back to the homeland. I am a white man sweating, possibly lugging and limping, walking in unity with black and Asian brothers and sisters.
And dream in how the procession might appear to others. This fast-paced line of walkers, not making much sense, passes thru a string of quotidian life bearing an inscrutable message. How is it to be interpreted?
Another question: how are we received in the Bronx and Harlem? I'd say mainly with smiles, questions, thumbs up. And also with shouts and suspicious looks. One black woman-if I heard her shouts properly-claimed to have gone way beyond being African. Some refuse our flyers. Young black men sometimes scowl. And from time to time white people malign the procession, especially if we are blocking their vehicles.
Ramona, speaking at a gathering recently, basing her imagery on what's been forming in the thinking of the people of color on our journey, interprets the Pilgrimage as a ship. (I can only hope to crudely outline her image.) We raise the sails early in the morning as we ourselves rise from sleep, to pray, fuel with food, pack, and be off. We point the ship eastward, toward Africa, the homeland of many of these sailors, to honor the continent, bring the ancestral spirits home. Our water is yet to be defined, perhaps the milieu of history and legend, imagery and story, the freedom struggles of enslaved Africans. Perhaps we sail on the river of Vincent Hardings's book, There is a River.
What propels our journey retracing the African slave trade journey, our attempt to uncover hidden history. We sail to help cleanse and heal this nation of an egregious past. And the wind, what is the wind?