Life's Walk

They sat in silence.

There was no "Amen" or nervous chatter, just silence. Members of the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship sat in their fabric-covered seats without uttering a sound. Minutes before they had heard from a man who had lived in Cambodia 27 years and had witnessed firsthand the despair of a war-torn country full of starving refugees.

"I went to Cambodia as a joke," said Bob Maat, a Jesuit physicians’ assistant and co-founder of the Coalition for Peace and Reconciliation in Cambodia.

There had been a Time Magazine cover of a "starving mother and child from Cambodia," that Maat says haunted him. He kept thinking about that photograph. In jest, he turned to his buddy one day, a student of theology, and said to him, "Frank, we ought to go to Cambodia."

"We went for three months; I stayed 27 years." said Maat, who first stepped foot in Cambodia in 1979.

"Adults and children were starving; it’s life changing when you’ve been with someone who is starving to death; you can’t be the same," Maat said.

There seemed to be a marked sense of sadness that belied the lightness of his tone. His attempt to tone down his weighted speech with jokes seemed to hit a Sunday sermon chord common in steeple settings.

The word "You" is not used in Cambodia, he said, instead people are called who they are such as mother, father, son, daughter, etc.

"I am Grandpa now," Maat said. "A young man came up to me and said, ’Grandpa, do you remember me?’ I had been there 27 years and did not remember him. He says to me, ‘My mother saw you walking down the road and pointed you out to me and told me that you were the foreigner who helped take care of me when I was hungry; you fed me ice cream when I was a baby.’ "

When he wasn’t trying to cure malnutrition, Maat was helping cure Cambodian refugees ravished with tuberculosis. In 1987, he contracted TB and was subsequently cured. He has served as a United Nations protection officer, as well as a rice farmer. Though he’s been stateside a while now, having returned to Cambodia twice, in 1984 and 1994, it seemed that no amount of distance or time would ever separate him from the borders of Cambodia.

"There was a prophecy that once said, ‘There will come a day when darkness will settle over the people of Cambodia. There will be houses with no people in them, roads with no people upon them … there will be no religion. People will live in jungles dressed in black. Only the mute and deaf will survive.’ In 1975, that prophecy came true. There were more bombs dropped in Cambodia than all of WWII. There were 3 million who died between 1975 and 1979. There was a lack of food, lack of medical care and just lack of care altogether."

In 1991, Maat and others started walking for peace in Cambodia. It was known as the Dhammayietra and has since become an annual month-long walk. He says the first Dhammayietra began in the refugee camps along the Thai border.

"We had a lot of obstacles to cross," said Maat, who was born in New York City and graduated from a Jesuit High School in Cleveland, Ohio followed by Emory, where he graduated in 1977 with an oncology degree.

Due to suffocating heat, Maat said walks would begin at 4 a.m.

"We walked with land mines in the ground," he said. "There were 10 million land mines in the ground - more land mines than people. We formed an army of peace. We used bullets of loving kindness. It was a land mine of the heart. Where there was greed, we used the weapon of generosity; where there was hatred, we used the weapon of loving kindness; where there was ignorance, we used the weapon of wisdom. We walked to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful and remove the wrongs of injustice."

It was his relationship with a monk named, Venerable Maha Ghosananda, now deceased, that Maat says transformed his way of thinking.

"He could speak 15 languages, but he spoke best the language of the heart," said Maat of Ghosananda.

Currently, Maat is hopping Greyhound buses traveling the countryside to educate the public about the importance of the Dhammayietra, a walk of hope.

In his closing remarks, Maat looked out over the gathered fellowship and spoke of what the Bible teaches.

"Jesus says to love one another as I first loved you," he said.

And with a soft step, he returned to his seat - to sit in silence.

To help fund the walk of peace in Cambodia, checks should be addressed to Coalition for Peace and Reconciliation in Cambodia or CPR, P.O. Box 60, Bungthong Lang Post Office, Bangkok 10242 Thailand.