Pilgrim Way Salon: Veronza Bowers

Pilgrim Way Salons
7p–9pm | Drinks & Appetizers to Start

Suggested donation: $10

What makes a life worth living? What does it mean to seek what is good, beautiful, and true?

Once a month, we gather around these questions for listening deeply and engaging with curiosity.  Our Pilgrim Way Salons are curated evenings of conversation, hospitality, and reflection hosted in a welcoming space, with drinks and light fare to begin.

"What’s a salon?"
It’s not just a haircut—or a fancy term. Historically, salons were intimate gatherings in homes where people explored big ideas through civil, spirited conversation. That’s what we’re reclaiming.

Each evening features a guest speaker or expert voice, followed by guided dialogue and generous Q&A. Whether you’re skeptical, spiritual, curious, or convicted, come pull up a chair. There’s room at the table.
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Pilgrim Way Salon: Peace in the Chaos, an Evening with Veronza Bowers
Saturday, December 12 

Veronza Bowers grew up in Oklahoma under segregation. In the late 1960s he joined the Black Panther Party. He helped build its Omaha chapter and later led the chapter in Richmond, California. “I wanted to build a better way of life for my people,” he says.

In 1974, a jury convicted him of murdering a federal park ranger. He has always maintained his innocence. He spent a half-century in federal prison and walked out on parole in 2024.

His aim never changed, but his tools did. Outside, he organized. Inside, with those options stripped away, he chose this:

“And I learned one thing during incarceration, that a man or a woman has to, sooner or later, make a decision, make a choice, as to how they intend to live life inside. Long ago, I made a decision. I made a choice to help my fellow man to heal and to find peace in the chaos. And that chaos be raging all around, swirling. Anyway, I was able to do that by utilizing the soothing and healing sounds of my beloved shakuhachi — that’s the bamboo flute that I blow — and meditation.”

Veronza will tell his story and play the shakuhachi for us. Twice, the Parole Commission set his release date and then reversed it. His legal team kept knocking on doors for nineteen years. We’ll ask what it takes to stay human in a place built to forget you, how a movement for justice becomes a ministry of healing, and what we owe the people we have stopped seeing.

Bring a friend and your questions about justice, healing, and mercy for us all.