Peace Pilgrim

Who was Peace Pilgrim?

Mildred Norman Ryder better known as Peace Pilgrim born Mildred Lisette Norman, was an American non-denominational spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist, vegetarian activist and peace activist. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season. She also walked across the United States at least eight times, and likely more than 20 times. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years.

A transcript of a 1964 conversation with Peace Pilgrim from a broadcast on KPFK radio in Los Angeles, California, was published as "Steps Toward Inner Peace". She stopped counting miles in that year, having walked more than 40,000 km for peace.

Famous Quotes:

• If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.
• Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return.
• We can work on inner peace and world peace at the same time. On one hand, people have found inner peace by losing themselves in a cause larger than themselves, like the cause of world peace, because finding inner peace means coming from the self-centered life into the life centered in the good of the whole. On the other hand, one of the ways of working for world peace is to work for more inner peace, because world peace will never be stable until enough of us find inner peace to stabilize it.
• Make food a very incidental part of your life by filling your life so full of meaningful things that you'll hardly have time to think about food.
• People see themselves as the center of the universe and judge everything as it relates to them.
• I've met a few people who had to change their jobs in order to change their lives, but I've met many more people who merely had to change their motive to service in order to change their lives.
• Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God.
• World peace will never be stable until enough of us find inner peace to stabilize it
• To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life -- bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.
• We are all cells in the same body of humanity.