Day 070f: Meeting Up & Letting Go … (June 23, 2019)
It turns out that my prolonged stay at Gite Agape had allowed a slower-sauntering Michael to unknowingly catch up to me and hobble past. And so it was that I soon caught up with him again that day and walked with him a ways – providing him with what little encouragement I could (he was noticeably struggling to put one foot in front of the other) before eventually flowing onward in harmony with my own day’s called-for cadence.*
“Grace is neither gentleness nor fragility. Grace is a combination of treating all others with a reverent respect, and then letting them flow onward without even the faintest hint of keeping them from where they must go & who they must become.” ~ inspired by Kamand Kojouri
*This proved to be one of the more intriguing facts of pilgrimage in general: namely, that it was almost impossible to walk with another pilgrim for any significant distance unless both travelers happened to have a keenly similar gait and fitness. Indeed, it was in truth surprising to learn that it was actually far more difficult to slow down for another than it was to speed up to keep up with them. This unwitting blessing allows – nay, forces – pilgrims to either smoothly sink into their own natural rhythm & tempo or injure themselves while striving to alter the same. This proved to offer a perpetual lesson in embracing encounters fully and then fully detaching from the same.
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