By Roger Plunk
Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2000. Paperback, xiv+ 191 pages.
Readers who believe that spirituality should be expressed in the world as well as in the heart will find a kindred spirit in Roger Plunk. In The Wandering Peacemaker, Plunk opens a window to his spiritual life as it has shaped his work as a freelance international mediator. Visionary since childhood, Plunk feels guided by a steadfast inner light. However, rather than becoming a cave-dwelling mystic, he has enthusiastically embraced life, studying philosophy and law and embarking on a career in which he has tried to bring peace to several troubled regions including Tibet and Afghanistan.
Plunk affirms "that solutions arc invariably spiritual," engendered by love, compassion, and flexible thinking, but the political impasses he has attempted to mediate are so bitter and deeply entrenched that Plunk is unsure of what influence he may have had. He uses an image of a boy fighting the waves of the ocean to illustrate the value of his work. Although the waves always win, at least he "jumped in and made an effort.
-PAUL WINE
January/February 2003