Ahead of a one-day Peace Pilgrimage to the SDSC arms fair this Saturday (31st January) Lorna Foster from Solihull Meeting offers personal reflections on last year’s multi-day Peace Pilgrimage from Oxford to the DSEI arms fair.
Time passes and the urgency I felt on the run up to that first day of September 2025 in Oxford fades. Greeting old friends and meeting new ones, I was unaware, as I relaxed in that beautiful Quaker garden, of how much the coming week would further influence my path to peace.
The time for socialising soon passed on that early autumn evening, to be taken over by fitting to a strict timetable in order for us to be able to cover the miles through the Oxfordshire countryside, into Buckinghamshire and so to London for the eve of the arms fair held at the Excel Centre. Teamwork, something I was only tentatively getting to grips with after years of believing it an exercise not possible for me, became essential, drawing out of me skills I never knew I had with the help of the group around me, so that I felt eager to return the generosity and empathy I received – kindness begets kindness, surely a first important step to peace in any language or culture?
Cooking, sleeping, laughing, organising and, of course, walking together – always together and acknowledging the enormous work put in by those who planned the route, the accommodation and the timings of it all, so that I could forget time and could just be in the moment. What a privilege!
The way was hard, some found it easier. There was conflict, there were deep reflections on our way. There were times when, for a multitude of reasons we each felt challenged beyond our endurance. The weather was sometimes unkind – rain lashed down upon us on the ridge of the beautiful Chiltern Hills, but the sight of the red kites, gliding and dipping, switching their forked tails in the clear air after a storm; rabbits scattering as we emerged from woodland into open meadow; blackberries growing within reach as we passed by, all made up for our discomfort. A startlingly unexpected view of a black lake reflecting a full moon hovering above it as I emerged from an outside toilet late one night enabled me to feel joy again after the difficult physical and emotional circumstances of staying in a refuge for destitute women. A moment of gratitude for a world made desperately unfair by humanity, but still giving back these precious moments if we only look for them.
We were never far from reminders and reminding each other of our privilege and our reasons to be thankful and so our imperative duty to use our positions to spread love across the world and to practise patience, listening, understanding. We used our nightly reflections to recount our individual experiences during the day, each of these causing us to think deeper, to smile or to shed a tear at the frustrating contradictions of the humanity in ourselves and those around us.
My final experience in the company of my fellow pilgrims was a moving candlelit vigil outside the gates of the Excel Centre. Before night set in and as we sat in silence, a small bird came to dance amongst us, a fragile pied wagtail, who stayed and showed itself as it was meant to be, unafraid, safe and happy.
Since then, I have been aware, like many others, of the growing atmosphere of mistrust and anger in communities, countries and governments, a turning away from mutual cooperation, a withdrawal of money for aid and pouring it into rearming of states. I have felt more moved to explore the lives of ‘strangers’, empowered by my experiences in that first week of September, when we wandered, conspicuously and purposefully, through rural and urban communities, receiving their hospitality and trust. I am striving to be one small drop in an ocean of peace. Our only enemy is hate, let’s start a war of kindness and learn to love our neighbours.
Photo: pilgrims leaving the Catholic Worker Farm, who had hosted us for two days in the middle of the pilgrimage.