No, I’m not walking 2,300 miles. But I am walking — through grief, through illness, through fear, through change, through truth-telling, and through writing. Each step becomes a meditation. With each step, I breathe, reminding myself: I am here. I belong. I am safe. In this way, even the smallest movement becomes a quiet prayer for peace.
For me, walking down peace is an invitation to come back into my body — to notice what I am feeling right now. Tightness, softness, fatigue, tenderness. It is the willingness to make life sacred even when nothing about it looks spiritual.
Especially then.
It might look like pausing before getting out of bed, one hand on my heart, letting my eyes open slowly, and taking in the room as it is — not as judgment, but as simple noticing. What do I see? How do I feel? It might look like moving more slowly than I think I should, or allowing myself to rest without explanation.
I once heard a voice from the whirlwind that said, ‘Just do the dishes.’
— Byron Katie
Walking down peace means doing the dishes — simply doing the dishes. Feeling the warm water, the weight of the plate, the rhythm of the movement. Not rushing toward what comes next. Not trying to fix anything. Just being here, fully, with what is.
The monks remind us of this. They remind us to pause, to breathe, to slow down. They remind us that each step, when taken with awareness, carries truth — not truth that needs defending or explaining, but truth that lives itself into the world. A quiet, wholesome way of being. A life laid down, one peaceful step at a time.
You are not an observer, you are a participant. ― Thich Nhat Hanh
This reflection lives alongside the larger body of work I’m shaping in my forthcoming book, The Seven Gates of Inner Light.