I thereafter made it into and through the town of Maslacq (where the Path unusually flowed away from the local church, not towards or past it) and felt almost compelled to stop and rest on a bench on the village outskirts. A sort of involuntary depression washed over me here – an odd sense of foreboding; a potent mix of fatigue and sadness. Two fellow pilgrims – an overtly cute and bouncy couple – walked past at that point and were both a bit unnerved by my obvious moroseness (even though I tried feebly to hide the same) … From whence did these feelings come? I had been exhausted before and not felt them. Maybe the recent lack of any significant acts of selfless service &/or meaning-full (i.e. Messsage-relaying) interactions with others was the source of my malaise … No matter; I rested there a few moments longer and then arose with renewed resolve – to walk onward as long as I could take even one more step, and to spread the message of Radical Kindness to all I encountered, even if not a single one of them was even remotely interested in the same.

“To live is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, even when your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh – only more of it; an obesity of grief, you think ‘How can I withstand this?’ And yet the you reach out and hold life like a face between your palms – a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes – and you say ‘Yes, I will take you with me. Yes, I will Love you again.’” ~ via Ellen Bass

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt