For 28 years silver-haired Mildred Norman Ryder wandered from place to place across America, walking over 25,000 miles to bring a message of peace to everyone she encountered. On her journey she took no money, personal belongings, or food. No cell phone, for in those days cell phones hadn’t been invented. What propelled her was confidence in the intrinsic kindness of human beings and trust in the goodness of life itself. She called herself Peace Pilgrim. Some have likened Peace Pilgrim to a Twentieth Century Saint Francis of Assisi.
Her motto was simple, yet transformative:
This is the way of peace:
Overcome evil with good,
and falsehood with truth,
and hatred with love.
And she put it into practice every step of the way.
Eiler Larsen was a wanderer of kindred spirit. He’d sojourned the world, leaving Denmark to sell butter in czarist Siberia, coming to America to attend college in Minnesota, traveling to South America, fighting in France during World War I, and hiking the Appalachian Trail with his dog Happy. When he discovered Laguna Beach in Southern California, he was so taken by its beauty that he decided to call it home.
I don’t care who they are, they all respond to goodwill. Some don’t even speak English, but they understand anyway. It’s my eyes. They project. They reach every car and every person, and they give the message of goodwill.
Rt: honorary statue of the Greeter in Laguna Beach.
Affectionately named the Laguna Beach Greeter, Eiler spent 33 years welcoming visitors along South Coast Highway. As a little girl, our family would often escape the heat of the desert in the summertime and drive west through the orange groves (no freeways in the 60′s) to the Pacific Ocean. Laguna was our favorite spot for swimming and sunbathing. Enroute back to San Bernardino, I looked forward to catching the Greeter’s eye and trading an enthusiastic hand wave.
In my current hometown, we take pleasure in our street artists, entertainers, cast of colorful local characters, and, of course, The Great Morgani, better known to Santa Cruzians as The Accordion Man, dressing in flamboyant spandex costumes and sharing melodies old, new, domestic, and foreign with strollers along the outdoor Pacific Garden Mall. In 2006 The Great Morgani was honored with a Gail Rich Award for inspiring Santa Cruz’ diverse and culturally rich community.
Why do this? For the sake of giving. These individuals have consciously rejected the conditioned giving-only-to-get mentality and embraced the saner, more loving paradigm of giving for its own sake. For the pure joy of it.
