The light on the hill

Gratitude, Solitude, and a Walk Across America

The break of a new day
From the Insightful Path

As a young man, I left my parents’ house. It was Easter Sunday, and I knew I needed to walk. Alone. Across my home country of America, hoping to discover who I was, and what it meant to live there.

I wasn’t a journalist, nor a writer of any renown. I was just a kid who felt there had to be more.

“The narrow road inward”
From the Insightful Path

This photo was taken in the heat of early summer… forty-degree days with humidity that sat on the skin like wet cloth… somewhere in the heartland of America.

By then I had walked at least 500 kilometres and had run out of all but $5.45 of my spending money. I purified water from streams. Food was packaged and dehydrated, carried on my back. I slept mostly in my tent, though sometimes beneath overpasses, in haylofts, or inside sheds, waking before dawn and moving on before anyone noticed.

Those days were hard. I was still learning the difference between loneliness and solitude, and discovering how attachment and acceptance wrestle with one another in the dark.

I was homesick. And uncertain why I was even making the journey. I was trying to get away from the noise of expectation and all the voices that had settled inside my head over the years.

My parents were both teachers, and when I was young my Mom often read poetry to me. One poem I never forgot was Shel Silverstein’s The Voice:

“There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long…”

The poem ends with the reminder that no teacher, preacher, parent, friend, or wise person can ultimately decide what is right for you. You must learn to listen to the quieter voice within.

That was the voice I think I was searching for.

I didn’t know it when I approached the small church on the hill, but I came a little closer to hearing it there.

‘Heartland relics’
From the Insightful Path

For days I had been walking through farmland along cracked county roads, past abandoned houses and collapsing barns. The homesickness had deepened into confusion and doubt, along with the fear that perhaps I might never find whatever it was I had set out looking for.

Then the air changed.

That strange metallic smell before a storm. Ozone. The sky darkened and the wind turned cold. I knew the kind of summer thunderstorm that was coming… the kind that rattles windows and shakes the ground; and I did not want to spend the night in my tent.

“Before the storm”
From the Insightful Path

Then I saw the church.

I remember hoping the door might be unlocked, and the feeling of relief when it was.

Inside there was running water, a stove where I could boil ramen and make tea, and a basket of bread rolls left in the kitchen. Not fresh, but filling. In the nave were beautiful wooden pews, polished smooth by generations of use. A small sign near the entrance said the previous week’s attendance had been fourteen. This week’s was eleven.

I remember wondering how far those people travelled to gather there.

‘Shelter from the storm’
From the Insightful Path

As the storm arrived, rain lashed against the walls and thunder rolled across the fields, but inside it was dry and warm. I laid out my sleeping bag across one of the pews and listened to the storm until sleep finally came.

The next morning I boiled water again, made oatmeal, filled my bottles, and prepared to leave.

Then I noticed the collection box.

This tiny congregation —(people who did not know me and likely never would) had given me shelter, warmth, safety, bread, and water.

And I felt I should leave something in return.

I had one five-dollar bill and forty-five cents in coins. If I left the note, I would have almost nothing. No money for a pay phone if I needed help. Nothing for food if I reached a store.

But leaving only the coins felt wrong.

So after packing my gear and cleaning the kitchen, I sat on the pew where I had slept and wrote a letter on a torn page from my journal.

“Hello.
You don’t know me, but last night I was scared. I’ve been walking for a couple of months now, and I haven’t slept indoors for many days. I found your church unlocked and took shelter from the storm here. I was hungry, and took a bread roll, and used your stove and water to cook my meal. Thank you.

I don’t have much to give in return for your generosity, but all the money I have left, I give to you. I hope your kindness continues to bless strangers on their path, as it has blessed me.”

‘Hearing the whisper’
From the Insightful Path

I left the $5.45 in the box, turned off the lights, lifted my pack, and closed the door behind me.

As I walked away, I turned back once and saw the sun rising behind the church, and took this photograph.

Standing there in the wet morning light, I felt something settle quietly inside me. Not certainty exactly. More like a whisper about gratitude, generosity, and acceptance. And lately I find myself thinking about that morning.

‘A river flows deeply, beneath the trees’
From the Insightful Path

We live in a time of loud voices. Fear travels quickly. Division travels even faster. Everywhere we turn there are people insisting we should distrust one another, withdraw from one another, harden ourselves against one another.

But when I think about what has sustained me most in life, it has rarely been ideology or certainty.

More often it has been moments like this.

A door left unlocked.
A stranger’s kindness.
A loaf of bread.
A place to rest during the storm.

I think, increasingly, that the future, our shared future, depends less on winning arguments than on whether we can still recognise one another as human beings worthy of care, and connect with one another because of this.

And when the noise becomes too much, I still try to get quiet enough to hear the whisper again.

‘The road continues’
From the Insightful Path