A few months ago, during a trip through Southeast Asia, I found myself in a small Laotian village at 4:30 in the morning, watching a sea of saffron-robed monks quietly making their way down a dirt road to the monastery. What made their procession even more memorable was the silent audience of villagers, mostly older women, kneeling by the side of the road, rising only to place an offering of sticky rice into the men’s baskets. This happens every morning.
It was a serene, beautiful sight far removed from the typical American morning of rushed stints on the treadmill, coffee to go and auto-pilot commutes to the office. I wondered what these monks and the women who honor them would think if they woke up one morning in the United States and realized that there was no procession to the monastery.
