My first pilgrimage

...But then, slowly, they accepted me and I began to discover a Poland I never knew, and her vast commonwealth of faith newly imbued with the spirit of Vatican II...

...The very first pilgrimage from Warsaw to Czestochowa was led by the Paulines in 1711...

...People dash for the two barns designated as our quarters for the night...

...Pilgrimages to Czestochowa had been harassed from the first days of Poland's "people's" government...

...Some locals are doing a brisk business...

...We line up for the Holy Communion under a roof of umbrellas...

...They put us up at Hotel Patria, Czestochowa's best, where we were wined and dined royally while the stores around town offered empty EWA BERBERYUSZ is a correspondent for Gazeta Wyborcza and lives in Warsaw...

...Operation Hole" was officially proclaimed an "error...

...Let us pray for those who walk with Jesus and those who don't...

...t Zachorzow, secret police agents shower us with leaflets: "Karol Wojtyla is a disappointment...

...A storm of protest broke loose around the country...

...our average daily distance is 30 kilometers or 245 km in almost nine days...

...Many pilgrims walked to Czestochowa "illegally," risking physical repression...

...We are entitled to two mugs of black coffee a day and a bowl of soup every other day...

...amico...

...Madonna nera/" The crowd breaks into a song to the tune of an old Negro spiritual: "Full of Power, Grace, and Glory...

...Then a crowd of pilgrims, knapsacks on their backs, storms through the rain into nearby farms looking for a dry place to sleep...

...Fresh vanilla ice cream...

...Stefan Barela, then bishop of Czestochowa, decided to do something about the ploy...

...I vaguely recall a similar scene in an old American movie about World War I. The Studzianna convent marks the boundary of the God-fearing Opoczyn country...

...But after decades of the Communist war against the church, even our minds were conditioned to ignore religion as part of the nation's life...

...An Italian pilgrim, shivering from cold, falls on his knees imploring: "Amico...

...single-use plastic raincoats, normally available at 40 zlotys, are selling for 140...

...Good folks emerge from the birch woods offering us pierogi, berries, and sour milk...

...In the Stalinist days, the routine was to allow or deny permission at the last moment before the pilgrimage...

...The editor of the Warsaw weekly Kultura, where I worked at the time, sent me to Czestochowa to cover a press conference called by the press department of the Communist party's central committee, to offer a "local perspective" on the affair...

...And the old man, in an even thinner voice: "Have mercy on an old man, brothers and sisters...

...A pilgrimage is not a cross-country hike...

...The orderlies get busy, organizing us in groups of ten, and the "great wait" begins: we move two steps forward and then stop...

...were ignored, or worse, answered with contempt...

...we address each other as "brother" and "sister," or by first names...

...And finally: Let's try to forget about ourselves and try to serve others, especially those we don't know or like...

...Systematic attempts were made to sabotage pilgrimages from the inside: disguising themselves as pilgrims, secret police agents staged drunken brawls, set fires, bellowed obscene songs as the pilgrims passed through villages...

...Next morning, en route, we have a conference on the causes John Cavadini I n August on A t l a n t i c S t r e e t In August on Atlantic Street The houses bob like boats Moored out in the sun And cicadas singing cast Their sound in skeins Across the ponds of air to Trees the other side...

...People pour out onto the street from homes, buildings, stores...

...Someone else observes, with cruel realism, that it's "nothing" considering the number of participants...

...There's shouting, crying, begging for help...

...Perhaps the Communist mayor of Czestochowa hit upon something when he said, half-disdainfully, half-enviously: "They march like stormtroopers and they sing erotica...

...Not a word was said about the hole's real purpose and our questions were answered vaguely amid assurances that the party "does not want a conflict with the church...

...Others, the John Waynes, are all over the place comforting the fearful and producing--miraculouslyISUCh luxuries as hot water, coffee, even cherry soup with dumplings...

...Last year, I'm told, the theme was: "Germans shot at your fathers, now you let them march with you...

...A woman gives him a nudge: "You should be ashamed, dad, don't you have enough to live on...

...The ground, ripened, dried, and Milled into a satisfying Dust, seems nourishing, A solemn sacrament Indifferently dispensed Now to wasps milling over Spoiled grapes, Now to the ermine Goldenrod standing at the gate, And now to the strict ascetic Phlox, emaciated, like the Perfect Saints who saw the Hesychastic light, and waited for Its last, sustaining touch...

...We were taken to the hole where we heard diatribes about the wonders of this "unique urban design...

...Someone brings buckets of cold fruit compote...

...We are encouraged to take a good supply of thick socks, boots, and Band-Aids...

...Apparently, she fainted...

...Then come our handicapped in wheelchairs and pushcarts, cheering, joyous, totally unexpectant of miracles...

...A pretty young nun bites noisily into an apple, chews on it with relish, and then intones in a steely voice: "Queen of Poland, clear the way for us...

...Our Cross enters the church momentarily, the rest of us sit on warm asphalt...

...Under Khrushchev, more refined methods were used to deal with religion...

...At first sight it looks a bit Byzantine, like Stalin's palace of culture...

...Ours set out on its way exactly 269 years later...

...The extremes of human nature become immediately visible: some of us, the wimps, curl up under our blankets and look frightened in the face of all this wilderness...

...You see, it's that we cannot go, so you go for us...

...In the morning, a middle-aged woman struggles to her feet from a bed of hay: "I already know what I dislike most in life: the Warsaw Walking Pilgrimage to Czestochowa...

...The Italians pitch in: "Pleni diforza, di grazia, di gloria"----their singing, naturally, much more melodious than ours...

...Figures in white rush to a young woman lying motionless on the ground...

...A continuous confession is taking place at the rear of each group, heard by priests wearing cassocks and stoles, often carrying plastic bags with a tomato, an apple, a thermos bottle...

...In Soborzyce, I decide to seek shelter in a local public school...

...A wonderful surprise: the school principal welcomes us with open arms, calls his friends and colleagues who readily invite our pilgrims to stay with them, and then we spend the night talking, talking, talking...

...Their pleas for emancipation, for representation in political institutions, for equal treatment, "for aren't we all children of the same mother...

...Someone, in the surrounding crowd says there were two deaths in our pilgrimage...

...Next morning the people of Czestochowa, to their chagrin, found the hole, framed with fresh yellow soil, at the end of the Avenue of Our Lady...

...torrential rain and a cannonade of lightning flashes bring instant integration...

...The people of Warsaw cried the same words on September 3, 1939...

...At Brudzewice, we are caught by a violent thunderstorm...

...The formula, the vitality of this street worship is borrowed from American black culture...

...Ice cream...

...Suddenly, we encounter opposition: a farmer denies us passage murmuring something about the damages he suffered last year...

...The sun has moved to the other horizon...

...Ann's Church adorned with a banner proclaiming: "Poland's Students March to Czestochowa...

...Our hosts slaughter a pig, heat water, bring huge cans of milk--all for the pilgrims...

...We don't know for sure, but certainly not less than 100,000...

...he Italians and Germans dominate among the foreign pilgrims...

...Every time a stop is announced, people drop to the ground, many out of breath...

...He leaked information about the hole to Radio Free Europe, which broadcast it to Poland...

...They look guilty accepting our money...

...Crowds on the sidewalks thicken as we move across town, there's more cheering and arm-waving...

...The hole under Jasna Gora was a chip off the same political block...

...Signed: Brother Guide...

...After paying the 200 zloty participation fee, we were issued badges identifying us as participants in "The 269th Warsaw Walking Pilgrimage to Jasna Gora...

...Before returning home, I was strongly tempted to visit Bishop Barela and learn "the rest of the story" but, frankly, I was afraid he wouldn't see me--after all, I worked for a government weekly, even though party insiders liked to call it a"nest of opposition" which, indeed, it was...

...Again, a cloudburst...

...Love is the theme in all these songs, hauntingly, incessantly, obsessively...

...Hail Mary...

...Or: "I'm gonna be there when the Lord is back...

...While marching, there were group discussions on the subject, "Why am I a pilgrim...

...The government's attempts to lie its way out of the predicament only added fuel to the fire...

...Brother Andrzej Wielowieyski (a highly respected Catholic writer) discusses two major currents in Poland's history: republican and feudal...

...But I am exhausted, hungry, thirsty, desperate, and wet, and so are my fellow pilgrims...

...Someone pulls out a hose from a nearby yard, sprinkles heat-exhausted pilgrims with cool water...

...Our nurse, a veteran of many marches and an expert in "pilgrim's syndrome," checks our eyes and tongues, sometimes sprays something into our throats...

...And then: "Let us pray for our brothers and sisters of other faiths, and for the atheists...

...The children are pushed to the fore: clean, festive, chocolate smeared around their smiling mouths...

...Someone gets on the horn and calls for a prayer for the spirit of tolerance to descend upon us and the whole church...

...A pilgrim, exasperated, in a desperate gesture, tosses his bag into the mud, grabs the farmer's lapels and screams, "You Catholic, or not, you son of a bitch...

...The town of Kunowice throws another party for us: bells, flags (even stars and stripes), folk costumes, children in white, bread and salt...

...I know my chances are slim: all the state agencies on the pilgrimage's route are under strict orders not to provide shelter, or any other help, to the pilgrims...

...Our first "sleeping quarters" is a farmyard sparely covered with hay...

...When the Communists struck Poland with their martial law in 1981 and the nation stampeded to seek refuge under the wings of the church, the spiritual ground for change was ready...

...The bright sun bleaches the white garb of the nuns, the white walls of the cloister, and the white walls surrounding it...

...Months before, there were lines at registration desks in St...

...t" The last leg...

...The same at Zachorzow where we stop for the night...

...But when we approach a town en route and the bells of the local church begin to peal to greet us, our backs straighten up and our voices gain in strength as we march, singing, with our flags, our sick and handicapped, our knapsacks, and our children (the youngest pilgrim is four months old...

...As the storm intensifies, our Italians, frightened, begin to recite a litany--a beautiful, exotic sound, effect heightened by the thunderclaps...

...We are organized into groups, each of which is led by someone carrying the Cross on a long pole, followed by pilgrims carrying loudspeakers and microphones...

...All of a sudden, our dirty, sweaty pilgrims undergo a miraculous transformation: fresh shirts, pants, blouses, clean shoes, ties, and jackets mysteriously find their way from the bags and knapsacks...

...She has some foot balsam and a wonder drug against diarrhea...

...The third day of the pilgrimage finds many of us in crisis...

...When we bring the bundles to the barns, shit comes with them...

...The first row of the French group wears the word "France" on the front of their shirts...

...As we stop at the church, crowds gather in the street, waving, applauding, singing...

...Nobody pays attention to the signs "Sisters' Barn" and "Brothers' Barn...

...But then, as we approach, the nobility of its shape gradually becomes clear...

...And, sure enough, there followed enmity, unrest, uprisings, finally Cossack wars which were the first portents of disintegration...

...As indeed it did not, at least not an open conflict, given the temperature of the public mood...

...Below, someone added: "Atheists included...

...Or: "Like a river, God's love flows through my soul...

...I 1 9 August 1991:461...

...We also received a pilgrim's guidebook: No alcohol, no smoking, no shorts, no rolled-up sleeves, no campfires...

...The gate of Jasna Gora is like the eye of a needle: the head of our column reaches it at 1 P.M., I'll be there, maybe, around 6 P.M...

...One farmer complains to me smilingly, without malice: "The biggest problem is the shit behind the hay bundles, out in the field...

...The singing is incessant, pervasive, overwhelming: "Madonna, oh, Black Madonna...

...No "sirs" or "madams...

...Just the same, I decided to participate in the next pilgrimage...

...The Communists' objective, of course, was to discredit the pilgrimages in the eyes of the rural population...

...And so I did...

...Crowds of Poles shout, "Long live France...

...I remember vividly that spontaneous demonstration on the streets of Warsaw as I rode in a horse-pulled cab with my father, already in uniform, on his way to war...

...She punctures blisters on our feet with a needle dipped in alcohol--a ritual that has become as important as prayers, conferences, as the pilgrimage itself...

...They take the mess we leave behind philosophically, as a penance...

...The authorities' idea was as transparent as it was cunning: Faced with an avalanche of pilgrimages from Warsaw and other parts of Poland, the Communists designed this "passage" as a control point to check the flow of pilgrims and detain them as deemed necessary...

...shelves...

...No mixed tents or other sleeping quarters...

...1 thought I was through with waiting on lines forever and ever/" 9 August 1991:459 But even then it didn't occur to me to try to cover "my" pilgrimage in Kultura...

...Says Brother Andrzej: "I am quite proud to have had a king who---at the time when the rest of Europe was ruled according to cuius regio, eius religio---told his people: 'I shall not be the lord of your consciences.'" The feudal current, on the other hand, stemmed from Poland's attitudes toward the grey, poor masses of settlers, mainly in the Eastern outlands of the kingdom, treated somewhat like a colony...

...And then: "Let us pray for these brothers amidst us who are here in line of duty...

...460: Commonweal of the fall of the Polish kingdom...

...Mining crews trucked in from Silesia accomplished the task swiftly and professionally...

...We can see Jasna Gora ahead of us...

...How many of us are walking...

...When I took the microphone and explained my not-quite-religious motives, my group's initial response was stony silence...

...The first has a longer tradition in Poland than in France---examples: neminem captivabimus rights, citizen status for Jewish settlers, safe haven for non-Catholics persecuted elsewhere, etc...

...We are on our way again...

...Beyond that, bring your own food and beverages...

...An old man in a chair rings a small bell: "Please, brothers and sisters, please, pilgrims, help an old man...

...So is the breathtaking bravura of spiritual optimism and sheer joy in God, so new to this part of the world: "...I've got a palace, far over the mountain, in the land where love never dies...

...Only to see the Black Madonna's face for a fleeting moment: the face of an old woman tortured with age and suffering, the face that could belong to the grandmother of the child she holds in her arms...

...Our Italians jump out of the column, hug the bystanders, call joyously, "Madonna nera...