(RNS) — Lately I’ve found myself checking in daily — sometimes two or three times a day — on the livestream of a group of Buddhist monks walking for peace across the United States. Since last fall, when they began their pilgrimage from their monastery in Fort Worth, Texas, toward Washington, D.C., this little distraction has helped keep me spiritually sane.
I’ve learned that “peace scrolling” the monks is healthier than doomscrolling the news, and that holiness of heart matters more than correctness of doctrine. Watching these monks place one mindful step in front of another has reminded me that peace in the world begins in the human heart — individually, in community and in cooperation.
Earlier this month I was at Duke Divinity School attending the annual John Wesley Fellowship conference, a gathering of scholars shaped by the Wesleyan Methodist tradition, just as the monks were crossing from South Carolina into North Carolina. A United Methodist congregation in Concord welcomed them for lunch and provided a venue for their public greetings. As word spread, their pilgrimage became a topic of conversation among us assembled Methodists who spend our lives studying a movement once known for its disciplined piety and public witness.
Over coffee, a colleague asked, “Have you been following the monks?” I found myself comparing their spiritual vitality with the disciplined piety of John Wesley and the early Methodists.
Wesley was an itinerant preacher who traveled thousands of miles on horseback and on foot, carrying the gospel beyond church walls into streets, fields and public squares. Early Methodism was a movement of faith, outdoor preaching and social action, dependent on hospitality and sustained by disciplined practices. At its core was what Wesley called “holiness of heart and life” — an inner transformation that showed itself in outward habits of love and mercy.
When Wesley described his own awakening, he spoke of his heart “strangely warmed,” not by doctrine but by an experience that re-ordered his desires.
The monks have “strangely warmed” my heart as well. Their walking reminds me of what Methodists once knew instinctively: that a heart of love is formed through personal experience and daily practice. Wesley’s methods applied to the body as well as to the soul. He urged Methodists to rise early, eat simply, sing “lustily,” exercise regularly, avoid excess and care for their health as a trust from God — advice he later gathered into Primitive Physick, his small handbook on practical medicine.
Such habits were not moral achievements but training in love. The body had to be schooled if compassion was to grow. Peace, for Wesley as for these monks, was not a slogan or a strategy but a way of inhabiting the world with spiritual attention and goodwill. Different robes, different bowls, different language — but a shared conviction that a heart of love is at the center of faith.
At the conference, I confessed to my colleague, only half-joking, “If I wasn’t Methodist, I might be Buddhist.” We laughed, but we also knew there was something serious underneath.
What first caught my attention was the way the monks embody what they teach. Their days follow a demanding rhythm. They rise before dawn and walk in silence through the early morning hours, moving slowly and deliberately. They pause often — sometimes to chant, sometimes to bless, sometimes simply to receive flowers or greetings from strangers who meet and follow them along the road.
Before noon they stop to eat, hosted by a local church or community group. Food is offered freely and received without preference. Short and practical teachings follow — simple reflections on forgiveness, compassion, joy, and mindfulness. Then they walk again until evening, when another host opens a door.
They do not argue for peace; they embody it. They do not protest; they chant and bless.
Along the way, Christian congregations have noticed. In Opelika, Alabama, on Christmas night, a local church opened its doors to the monks. In January, New Community Church in Raleigh, a non-denominational congregation, welcomed them with food and rest as they passed through the region. In other towns, Baptist, Lutheran and ecumenical congregations have done the same.
What has emerged is not a coordinated interfaith program but something one might call spiritual resonance. Certain Christians see in these monks a public faith marked by goodwill for all, and they respond with hospitality and hope.
One of the most striking elements of the pilgrimage is the alms bowl the monks carry on their back. It is not a sign of begging, but of simple trust and interdependence. Monks rely on the generosity of strangers and mutuality in giving, and those who welcome them receive a blessing. Watching this exchange unfold in public feels sacramental, a quiet circulation of grace where giving and receiving are inseparable. In a culture obsessed with self-sufficiency, this dependence without shame is quietly subversive.
Buddhists, of course, do not posit a personal creator God as Christians do. Yet at the level of the heart — where attention is trained, desire is re-ordered and compassion is practiced — there is real common ground. The monks describe their walk as a spiritual offering, not a political demonstration. It is an invitation to cultivate loving-kindness through everyday actions.
Wesley taught the same qualities in Christian language. Love, he insisted, is the end of all discipline. Forgiveness is the sign of a heart set free. Joy is the fruit of a life ordered by grace. In both traditions, peace is practiced before it is proclaimed.
This matters now because we are weary. Religious language has grown loud and abrasive. Many people inside and outside the church are fed up with hypocrisy and exhausted by moral outrage. What these monks offer instead is a gentle breath of love, joy, peace, kindness, humility and self-control—the very qualities Wesley called the fruit of the Spirit.
In the book of Acts, when a new religious movement unsettles the authorities, the rabbi Gamaliel offers wise counsel: If this work is merely human, it will fail; but if it is of God, it cannot be stopped. Perhaps that is the posture required of us now — not anxious control or dismissive judgment, but patient discernment. Watching these monks walk for peace, I find myself wondering whether we are being asked simply to watch, to listen and to notice the fruit.
These monks are making a significant spiritual impression in America. Perhaps God is at work here — walking slowly among us.
(Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D., is a Methodist minister, theologian and church historian in San Diego. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)