The Many Faces of Peace

After reading about the Buddhist monks and their current "Walk for Peace", a 2,300 mile journey across America, I found myself asking what the word peace is really asking of us.

Peace isn’t only the quiet after a storm, or the absence of shouting, or the end of war. It is a many-named thing—sometimes a breath you can finally take, sometimes a door that can finally open.

Some of us are reaching for inner peace, the steadiness that doesn’t shatter when life does.

Some want peace of mind, the relief of knowing what’s been broken is mended—or at least held with care.

Some are longing for interpersonal peace, the softening of old resentments, the return of respectful speech.

Others are pleading for community peace, where streets feel safe, and neighbors feel like neighbors again.

And beyond the self, beyond the home, there is the wider hunger: civil peace that steadies a country, international peace that quiets borders, and just peace—not merely silence, but fairness; not order, but dignity.

So when the monks walk, step after step, it feels like they are carrying a truth the body understands: peace is not a single destination. It is a path with many forms—and each of us arrives seeking a different kind of peace.

It didn’t begin with fanfare—
only a road
and intention.

October 26, 2025:

Fort Worth let them go

like breath

released on purpose

as if the city exhaled

and meant it.

Robes—

a moving line of saffron,

the country’s long shoulder

learning to soften,

learning the holy art

of stillness in motion.

Ahead: Washington, D.C.,

not as a trophy—

Instead, a point on the map

where a promise arrives

still barefoot,

still human,

still made of promise.

Two thousand three hundred miles—

a number that behaves

until you live inside it:

day after day,

ten states of horizon,

the slow, methodical prayer

of endurance—

the kind that asks no applause,

only breath.

They carry little.

Not because they have nothing—

because peace can’t be packed

without breaking its seams.

The soul travels lighter

when it means to stay.

One meal.

A patch of ground beneath trees.

A kindness offered roadside—

water, fruit, a wave

that whispers without words:

I see you.

I bless your journey.

And the quiet discipline of it—

walking as meditation,

silence as shelter,

each step an unarmed answer,

each footfall

a small refusal

to become what harms.

Beside them,

a dog with a rescued history—

Aloka,

once stray,

now steady as a vow.

Sometimes he walks.

Sometimes he rides.

Always, he returns to the line,

because devotion has a heartbeat, four paws,

and a home it keeps choosing.

Traffic slows.

Phones lower.

Hands unclench.

Faces change in real time.

Strangers stand shoulder to shoulder and remember

they belong to one another

for the length of a passing moment—

long enough

to be altered.

Because when peace is visible—

not argued,

not branded,

not sold—

something simple and radical happens:

it makes the heart recognizable.

Not their hearts only—

ours, too:

the ones we hide

behind loud voices

and tightened fists.

The peace we keep waiting for

is not a headline.

It’s a lifestyle—

a daily practice of fewer weapons,

lighter burdens,

cleaner speech,

steadier mercy.

Peace isn’t absence of conflict;

it’s the presence of choice

when conflict arrives:

the pause, the breath,

the turned-down volume,

the hand that does not strike.

It is the work

of carrying less rage,

So we can carry more care.

It is learning

that the truest border

is the one we draw

inside our own chest—

erasing it

one inch at a time.

And if nineteen-plus robes

and one small dog

can move through weather

and still bless the roadside—

still offer their bodies

as prayer—

then surely

each of us can carry

one quiet portion of peace

within our ribs,

and let it live there

as a way of walking

through the world.

Not someday.

Not when the world behaves.

Today, with empty hands.

Today,
with an unbroken step.

What Peace Asks of Us

by Barb Casper