I was walking down the street in New York City one day, when I heard a woman's voice saying, "I was very sick all winter." Intrigued, I turned around and saw the woman handing a street person, sitting on the sidewalk, some money. She went on talking to him. "I had pneumonia, and every time I started to get better, I'd have a relapse. Now I am finally really getting better, and I just wanted to share the joy."
As they talked together of The Way, the obstacles, the people, the signs ... you felt the great importance of the physicality of the quest. All of them stressed the power of silence: the need to be alone and find oneself in the silence. Moving alone, with silence as the single companion, seems a most profound means to register the natural balance of the world without, and world within.