If you read my last post, you could tell my energy was optimistic and hopeful going into the New Year. But what happened later that evening was unimaginable.
A group of Buddhist monks walked through my rural county.
That sentence still feels surreal. It was history unfolding right in front of my teary eyes. Here they were… orange robes against Georgia red clay and loblolly pines, quiet voices moving through a place that usually only hears tractors, loud trucks, gunshots, and wind. Sadly, all I have is this one grainy photo - it was getting dark and the light was low.
They were supposed to walk through Athens, but just a day before, they shifted their route to bypass the city and take the rural roads of Oglethorpe County, GA. I had no intention of going out of my way to see them. If you know me, big crowds and traffic are not my thing. But lo and behold, they just… arrived.
The way meaningful things often do when you’re in the right headspace to take them in.
Their walk was quiet, but so powerful. a walk for peace. An example of love and presence without saying a word. So many feelings bubbled up in that brief moment: grief, attachment, longing, love. It’s wild how the mind loops, how the heart keeps reaching.
Which felt uncanny, because my life had been doing exactly that.
I had been unraveling something old; a relationship story I kept retelling to myself, trying to make it end differently. Trying to make it mean something more.
But clarity doesn’t come from retelling the past.
It comes from stillness in the present.
The monks didn’t walk from Texas to give anyone advice. They didn’t need to. They simply embodied the truth of impermanence:
how everything changes
how clinging creates suffering
how letting go is not a loss, but a return
So while they passed by cow pastures at dusk, something shifted quietly inside me.
I needed this.
An example of how a group can be so loud without making a sound.
No lectures.
No pressure.
No bullhorns.
No instructions.
Just quiet action.
There’s something almost mythical about these monks showing up in such backwoods, ordinary places. It reminds me that I don’t have to leave my life to wake up inside it. I don’t have to abandon my dogs, my dirt road, my messy heart, my thrifted dresses, or my complicated love stories.
I just have to be present for them.
Seeing the monks walk through didn’t give me answers.
It gave me peace.
It’s fitting they call it a “Walk for Peace.”
Because peace, I’m learning, is what happens when you stop negotiating with what is.
xo
- s
No comments:
Post a Comment